Adults Mathematics, Popular Culture, and Lifelong Learning

1
Adults Mathematics, Popular Culture, and
Lifelong Learning

• Jeff Evans
• Middlesex University
• London
• J.Evans_at_mdx.ac.uk
• EMMA Clustering Conference
• Florence, 6-8 September 2007

2
Issues related to mathematics and numeracy on
educational policy agenda

• need for more people trained in maths / science
  for productivity and national competitiveness
• need for more people literate in maths /
  science
• YET
• declining numbers of students studying maths /
  science to higher levels
• performance levels low on adult maths (surveys,
  e.g. NRDC in UK) and
  innumeracy (anecdotal, J. Paulos)
• still socially acceptable in many societies to
  proclaim ones incompetence with numbers,
  mathematics

3
Issues re. emotions / motivation firmly on
educational policy agenda

• generally emotional literacy, EQ (cf. IQ)
• motivation including adults (Skills for Life)
• especially for mathematics gatekeeper
• Public images of mathematics (FitzSimons, 2002)
• concern with beliefs, values, attitudes,
• cognitive and affective
• public images of mathematics and of school maths
  difficult to disentangle

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Where do emotions, attitudes, beliefs come from?

• Experiences at school, college (one-off or
  repeated) as interpreted by the learner
• Interactions with significant others Teachers
• Parents / elders
• Siblings / peers
• (Fennema Sherman, 1976)
• Cultural representations films, advertisements
• (Evans, Tsatsaroni Staub, 2007)

5
Images of mathematics in popular culture

• focus on advertisements films
• powerful media forms
• discussions relatively accessible
• Phase I
• small opportunistic samples of each (most
  before 2001)

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Letts Advert for Study Aids (Observer, 1987)
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Enigma (2001)

• Theme song in the background, they are sitting on
  a sofa.
• She Why are you a mathematician? Do you like
  sums?
• He, holding a rose Because I like numbers
  because, with numbers, truth and beauty are the
  same thing you know youre getting somewhere,
  when the equations start looking beautiful. (He
  looks at her slightly appraisingly /
  appreciatively.)
• Then you know the numbers are taking you closer
  to the secret of how things are. A rose is just
  plain text
• He hands her the rose she takes it, but, as he
  passes it over, a thorn punctures his thumb and
  makes it bleed. She kisses his thumb they
  embrace.

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Images of mathematics in popular culture

• Conclusions / Conjectures from Phase I
• Adverts mathematics to be disliked, feared,
  mistrusted
• Films (e.g. Good Will Hunting (1997), A Beautiful
  Mind (2001), Enigma ( 2001) - ambivalent message
  
• Mathematics powerful form of thought
• quest for truth and beauty
• BUT ALSO dangerous perhaps triggers madness

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Current work in progress

• Phase II production of larger samples of both
  adverts and films
• Adverts Systematic sampling of daily newspapers
  from 1994-2003
• Films 40 promising titles found from archive
• General Research Question Whether popular
  representations of maths reinforce / challenge
  public images, and how?
• Phase III focus on advertisements

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Theoretical Considerations

• cultural representations (films, adverts) reflect
  dominant social discourses but also construct
  /maintain them
• ? put individuals into positionings (power) in
  social / educational contexts i.e. not
  completely free
• ? persons identity constructed in the process
• central feature is the linking of cognitive and
  affective, and the place of emotion in
  cognitive-affective chains of meaning.

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Identity

• includes more durable affect attitudes,
  beliefs
• comes from repetitions of positionings, and the
  related emotional experiences
• in context of a personal history of positionings
  in different practices / activities

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Psychoanalytic Insights

• Emotions maybe unconscious, thus
• everyday life mediated by unconscious images,
  thoughts and fantasies (Hunt, 1989)
• Emotions connected with desires and fantasies
• - many unconscious
• - social connected with social imagery,
  e.g. advertising and films,
• shared at the group, professional, national
  level
• --- scene from Enigma

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Pedagogic discourse (Bernstein, 2000)

• Cultural productions,
• e.g. teacher talk, textbooks, syllabuses,
• adverts, films etc.,
• translate a given distribution of power, etc.
  into forms of pedagogic communication
• But media representations contain a range of
  discourses that are segmentally / cumulatively
  organized
• unlike pedagogic discourses hierarchical,
  logical

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Research questions

• To what extent do advertisements use maths as a
  resource to construct their messages?
• What kinds of discourse(s) on mathematics,
  mathematicians, learners of maths, etc. can be
  identified in a sample of media productions?
• Changes in these discourses over time?
• Which discourses drawn on by adverts to construct
  the public/reader as a person who is
  knowledgeable, or otherwise, in mathematics?

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Methodology

• (1) Categorising an advert as instance of
• representation of mathematics /
  mathematicians
• keywords mathematics mathematician math/s
  geometry / geometrician algebra equation(s)
  number(s) science / scientist calculation(s)
• graph, a formula or equation
• name, or picture, of a prominent mathematician,
  e.g. Einstein.
• NOT prices, discounts, interest rates

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Methodology

• (2) Optimistically seeking adverts
• National Newspaper Library (cf. agency)
• sampling scheme based on readership profiles
• 3 quality newspapers (Times, Telegraph, FT),
• 1 mid-market paper (Daily Mail),
• 2 popular papers (Sun, Daily Mirror)
• systematically selected two periods (10-15 days)
• for 1994, 1997, 2000, and 2003, plus 2001
• i.e. light sampling

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Results

• (A) Basic characteristics of the advertisements
• 550 editions of daily newspapers only 9 adverts

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Product category of all adverts (n 15)
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Advertisements
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Hybrid content analysis /semiotic reading

• Overt aim of the advert
• Appeal rational worry / relief sensual
  testimonial (Leiss et al., 1990)
• Public images of mathematics
• Public images of school mathematics
• Public images of people doing mathematics

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Jaguar (Daily Mail, April 2003)

• Aim inform of low environmental tax payable, due
  to low CO2 emissions, unmatched car build
• Appeal rational sensuous
• Image of mathematics equations confirm simple,
  straightforward statements about cars uniqueness
• Science, mathematics as referent system
  (Williamson, 1978) guarantees truth
• BUT lets look XJ low BIK
• XJ (CO2 x OTR) low BIK
• Other themes sensitivity to environment

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Quorn (Daily Mail, 2x, 5 days, Mar. 2003
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Quorn (Daily Mail, 2x, 5 days, Mar. 2003)

• Aims sympathise with readers re. Wednesdays
• alleged mid-week blues
• Appeal worry Weds. feeling low / under-perform
  relief product as a solution
• Image of mathematics simple data analysis
• BUT scientific, able to certify,
  authoritative
• However,ultimately wrong-headed /unnecessary
• differing subject-positions
• Other issues large corps. speak to consumer
• BUT trivialise tools (maths) available to
  readers
• OR not needed anyway
• ORjust a laugh?

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p (Pi), Givenchy (2002)
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p (Pi), Givenchy (2002)

• Aim to announce a new men's perfume
• to associate positive (masculine) qualities with
  it
• Appeal sensual, heavily gendered (chain of
  meaning)
• Image of mathematics seems more open-ended
  mathematical object, p, evokes infinity
• Image of doing mathematics men still in
  pursuit of the end of its innumerable string of
  decimals
• However, heros quest limited, and maths reduced
  to long (!) tedious calculation
• Overall, maths very selectively invoked

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Conclusions

• Maths figures in very few adverts,
• THO light sampling
• concentrated in the quality / mid-market press
• more likely in adverts for cars /business
  services
• Mathematics a cultural resource or silenced?
• 2. Image of maths here
• much basic calculation (e.g. Pi)
• simple data presentation limited, or even
  fabricated (e.g. Quorn)
• simple equations maybe trite (A B C),
  erroneous, incomprehensible or meaningless
• Maths generally trivialised

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• 3. Complexity of decoding processes for
  adverts
• ? a process of differentiation
• of diff. categories of readers (e.g. Quorn)
• of different levels of media literacy
• parallels market-segmentation
• 4. Advertising communications aim to distribute
  forms of consciousness, identity, desire
• Advertisers educational strategies,
• related to policies on advertising e.g. UK cigs

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• 5. Further issues of policy
• issues of Corporate Social Responsibility?
• dilemmas for state science-based
  corporations
• Public Understanding of Mathematics,
• repositioning Maths e.g. Simon Singh
• 6. Schools / colleges dual pedagogic strategy
• critical AND constructive use of ads
• twin-track pedagogy cognitive affective

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Further research

• Reading adverts
• Phase III less light sampling
• Other types of adverts job adverts
• Other publications e.g. youth magazines
• 2. Audience response (e.g. Heather Mendick)
• children vs. adult differences
• 3. Institutional relations of advertising
• corporations / agencies / experts
• the creative process

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Smiilas Feeling for Snow (1997)

• He And you were never happy here?
• She The only thing that makes me truly happy is
  mathematics snow ice numbers She smiles.
  To me the number system is like human life. First
  you have the natural numbers, the ones that are
  whole and positive, like the numbers of a small
  child. But human consciousness expands and the
  child discovers longing. Do you know the
  mathematical expression for longing? He shakes
  his head. Negative numbers, the formalisation of
  the feeling that you're missing something. Then
  the child discovers the in-between spaces,
  between stones, between people, between numbers
  and that produces fractions. But, it's, it's like
  a kind of madness, because it doesn't even stop
  there. There are numbers that we can't even
  begin to comprehend. Mathematics is a vast open
  landscape you head towards the horizon, it's
  always receding like Greenland. And that's what
  I can't live without, that's why I can't be
  locked up.
• He Smylla, can I kiss you? She moves away.

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References

• Advertising
• Leiss, W., Kline, S., Jhally, S. Botterill, J.
  (2005). Social communication in advertising
  Consumption in the Mediated Marketplace ( 3rd
  edn.). London Routledge.
• Williamson J. (1978). Decoding advertisements.
  London Marion Boyars.
• Theoretical perspectives
• Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control
  and identity theory, research, critique. New
  York Rowman Littlefield.
• Evans J. (2000). Adults mathematical thinking
  and emotions a study of numerate practices.
  London RoutledgeFalmer.
• Evans, J. (2006). Affect and emotion in
  mathematical thinking and learning the turn to
  the social Sociocultural approaches in J. Maasz
  W. Schloeglmann (Eds.), New mathematics
  education research and practice (pp. 233-255).
  Rotterdam Sense Publishers.
• Evans, J., Morgan, C. Tsatsaroni, A. (2006).
  Discursive positioning and emotion in school
  mathematics practices, educational studies in
  mathematics Affect in mathematics education
  Exploring theoretical frameworks. Psychology of
  mathematics education (PME) Special Issue, 63(2),
  209-226.
• Evans, J., Tsatsaroni, A. Staub, N. (2007).
  Images of Mathematics in Popular Culture /
  Adults Lives a Study of Advertisements in the
  UK Press, Adults Learning Mathematics an
  International Journal (in press).