Representations of Mathematicians in Lower Secondary Mathematics Textbooks

Apolo Castaneda; Mario Sánchez Aguilar; Ana Luisa Gómez-Blancarte; Avenilde Romo-Vázquez; Javier Lezama-Andalón; Isaías Miranda-Viramontes

doi:10.29333/ejmste/106056

Apolo Castaneda ¹ ^* , Mario Sánchez Aguilar ², Ana Luisa Gómez-Blancarte ², Avenilde Romo-Vázquez ², Javier Lezama-Andalón ², Isaías Miranda-Viramontes ²

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¹ Centro de Investigacion y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politecnico Nacional, MEXICO² Instituto Politécnico Nacional, CICATA Legaria, MEXICO^* Corresponding Author

Abstract

We report on a study focused on identifying and describing the representations of mathematicians contained in Mexican textbooks of lower secondary level. We considered representations not only in the text but also in drawings, photographs, and illustrations in general. The term mathematician was understood in a broad sense: any person (or group of people) that in the textbook either (1) was explicitly referred to as a mathematician, (2) was credited with the development of a mathematical concept or tool, or (3) was displayed performing some sort of mathematical activity (such as counting, modelling, etc.). The results show that the representations that most frequently appear in the textbooks are white male mathematicians (mainly Europeans), who lived in ancient times; the representations of female mathematicians are almost nil. At the end of the paper the implications of these results are discussed, and some directions for future research are suggested.

Keywords

images of mathematicians
lower secondary education
mathematics textbooks
representations of mathematicians

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed, Volume 15, Issue 7, July 2019, Article No: em1716

https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/106056

Publication date: 29 Mar 2019

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How to cite this article

APA

Castaneda, A., Aguilar, M. S., Gómez-Blancarte, A. L., Romo-Vázquez, A., Lezama-Andalón, J., & Miranda-Viramontes, I. (2019). Representations of Mathematicians in Lower Secondary Mathematics Textbooks. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 15(7), em1716. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/106056

Vancouver

Castaneda A, Aguilar MS, Gómez-Blancarte AL, Romo-Vázquez A, Lezama-Andalón J, Miranda-Viramontes I. Representations of Mathematicians in Lower Secondary Mathematics Textbooks. EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed. 2019;15(7):em1716. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/106056

AMA

Castaneda A, Aguilar MS, Gómez-Blancarte AL, Romo-Vázquez A, Lezama-Andalón J, Miranda-Viramontes I. Representations of Mathematicians in Lower Secondary Mathematics Textbooks. EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed. 2019;15(7), em1716. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/106056

Chicago

Castaneda, Apolo, Mario Sánchez Aguilar, Ana Luisa Gómez-Blancarte, Avenilde Romo-Vázquez, Javier Lezama-Andalón, and Isaías Miranda-Viramontes. "Representations of Mathematicians in Lower Secondary Mathematics Textbooks". Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education 2019 15 no. 7 (2019): em1716. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/106056

Harvard

Castaneda, A., Aguilar, M. S., Gómez-Blancarte, A. L., Romo-Vázquez, A., Lezama-Andalón, J., and Miranda-Viramontes, I. (2019). Representations of Mathematicians in Lower Secondary Mathematics Textbooks. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 15(7), em1716. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/106056

MLA

Castaneda, Apolo et al. "Representations of Mathematicians in Lower Secondary Mathematics Textbooks". Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, vol. 15, no. 7, 2019, em1716. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/106056