Toward an Anthropology of Graphing: Semiotic and Activity-Theoretic Perspectives

ISBN-13: 9781402013744 / Angielski / Twarda / 2003 / 342 str.

Wolff-Michael Roth; W. M. Roth

Opis

During the summer of 1990, while taking my holidays to teach a university course of physics for elementary teachers, I also tutored one of the tenth-grade students at my school in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. In return for working with him for free, I had requested permission to audiotape our sessions; I wanted to use the transcripts as data sources for a chapter that I had been in vited to write. It so happened that I discovered and read Jean Lave's Cognition in Practice that very summer, which inspired me to read other books on mathe matics in everyday situations. Two years later, while conducting a study with my teacher colleague G. Michael Bowen on eighth-grade students' learning during an open-inquiry ecology unit, I discovered these students' tremendous data analysis skills that appeared to be a function of the deep familiarity with the objects and events that they had studied and mathematized earlier in the unit. I reported my findings in two articles, 'Mathematization of experience in a grade 8 open-inquiry environment: An introduction to the representational practices of science' and 'Where is the context in contextual word problems?: Mathematical practices and products in Grade 8 students' answers to story problems'. I Begin ning with that study, I developed a research agenda that focused on mathemati cal knowing in science and science-related professions. During the early 1990s, I was also interested in the notion of authentic practice as a metaphor for planning school science curriculum."

Spis treści

1 Toward an Anthropology of Graphing: An Introduction.- 1.1 Graphing is Pervasive.- 1.2 Nature of Practice.- 1.3 Reading Graphs as Semiotic Practice.- 1.4 Graphs as Sign Objects.- 1.5 Graphing as Rhetorical Practice.- 1.6 Graphs as Conscription Devices.- 1.7 Conclusion and Outlook.- One: Graphing in Captivity.- 2 From ‘Expertise’ to Situated Reason: The Role of Experience, Familiarity, and Usefulness.- 2.1 How Competent are ‘Expert’ Scientists?.- 2.2 Data and Model of One ‘Expert’ Reading.- 2.3 What is Missing from the Standard Model?.- 2.4 Reading versus Interpreting.- 2.5 Critique of the Traditional Expert Model.- 2.6 Disciplinary Critique of the Population Graph.- 3 Unfolding Interpretations: Graph Interpretation as Abduction.- 3.1 Abduction.- 3.2 Between Ecology and Representation.- 3.3 Proliferation of Inscriptions.- 3.4 Perceptual Structures and Interpretants.- 3.5 Reference, Sense and Meaning.- 4 Problematic Readings: Case Studies of Scientists Struggling with Graph Interpretation.- 4.1 Toward an Alternative to Mental Deficiency.- 4.2 A Graph that Does not Convey any Information.- 4.3 Graph Demands Knowledge of Population Ecology.- 4.4 Graphs as Open Texts.- 4.5 Are Scientists Experts and Others Novices?.- 5 Articulating Background: Scientists Explain Graphs of their Own Making.- 5.1 From Interpreting to Reading Graphs.- 5.2 Transparent Graphs in Scientific Research.- 5.3 Graphing and Activity Systems.- 5.4 Doing Puzzles versus Articulating Work.- Two: Graphing in the Wild.- 6 Reading Graphs: Transparent Use of Graphs in Everyday Activity.- 6.1 From Captivity to the Wild.- 6.2 Practical Competence in Everyday Situations.- 6.3 Creek, Community, and History.- 6.4 Graphs and the Concrete Lived-in World.- 6.5 Division of Labor.- 6.6 Graphs as Sites of Struggle.- 6.7 Knowing Graphs in Context.- 7 From Writhing Lizards to Graphs: The Development of Embodied Graphing Competence.- 7.1 Graphs: Inside and from Outside.- 7.2 From Writhing and Biting Lizards to Docile Graphs.- 7.3 Fieldwork and Embodied Understanding.- 7.4 Ecological Fieldwork is Coordination Work.- 7.5 Taming Nature: Measuring.- 7.6 Measurement: Adequatio Rei et Instrumenta.- 7.7 Calculating at Last.- 7.8 Mathematization of Professional Vision.- 8 Fusion of Sign and Referent: From Interpreting to Reading of Graphs.- 8.1 Introduction.- 8.2 Experimenting and Visual Topology.- 8.3 Laboratory and People.- 8.4 One Data Run.- 8.5 Continuity of the Object.- 8.6 Transformations.- 8.7 Into the Community.- 8.8 Mutual Stabilization of Graph and ‘Natural Object’.- Appendix: The Tasks.- A.1 Plant Distributions.- A.2 Population Dynamics.- A.3 Isoclines.- A.4 Scientists’ Graphs.- Notes.- References.