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Solomon & Croft Undergraduate disengagement ACCEPTED version.pdf (122.65 kB)

Understanding undergraduate disengagement from mathematics: addressing alienation

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journal contribution
posted on 2016-01-26, 14:24 authored by Yvette Solomon, Tony Croft
This paper explores the phenomenon of student disengagement from university mathematics through the lens of Marx's concept of alienation. Distinguishing between alienation as an objective relationship and the subjective state of disaffection, it argues that dominant modes of teaching in the English school system produce alienated relationships with mathematics, including among successful students, which university teaching does not necessarily reverse. Drawing on interviews with 15 second-year mathematics single major students from 4 universities, in which they explain their experiences of university mathematics, we argue that 'undoing' alienation and enhancing engagement at university rests on the development of new relationships with mathematics through greater support for students' developing confidence in independent mathematical judgement.

History

School

  • Science

Department

  • Mathematics Education Centre

Published in

International Journal of Educational Research

Citation

SOLOMON, Y. and CROFT, T., 2015. Understanding undergraduate disengagement from mathematics: addressing alienation. International Journal of Educational Research, 79, pp. 267-276.

Publisher

© Elsevier

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2015

Notes

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal International Journal of Educational Research and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2015.10.006.

ISSN

0883-0355

Language

  • en

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