Adults’ Mathematics, Popular Culture, and Lifelong Learning

Jeff Evans Middlesex University

LondonJ.Evans@mdx.ac.uk

EMMA Clustering ConferenceFlorence, 6-8 September 2007

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 one’s incompetence with numbers, mathematics

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

Where do emotions, attitudes, beliefs come from?

Experiences at school, college (one-off or repeated) as interpreted by the learner

Interactions with ‘significant others’: TeachersParents / eldersSiblings / peers

(Fennema & Sherman, 1976)

Cultural representations: films, advertisements(Evans, Tsatsaroni & Staub, 2007)

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)

Letts Advert for Study Aids (Observer, 1987)

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 you’re 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.

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’

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

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

person’s ‘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.

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

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

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’

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?

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

Methodology(2) Optimistically seeking adverts …

• National Newspaper Library (cf. agency)

• sampling scheme based on readership profiles3 ‘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

Results

(A) Basic characteristics of the advertisements550 editions of daily newspapers: only 9 adverts

Newspaper No. editions examined

No. of Ads

“Success rate”

Times 105 4 4/105 = 4% Financial Times

124 0 0

Daily Telegraph

76 1 1/76 = 1.3%

All Qualities 305 5 5/305 = 1.64% Daily Mail 97 4 4/97 = 4% Sun 53 0 0 Daily Mirror 88 0 0 All Papers 543 9 9/543 = 1.66%

Product category of all* adverts (n = 15)

Product category Number Automobiles 4 Business Services 3 Study Aids 2 Food 2 (1 campaign) Consumer ‘Phone Services 1 Bank 1 (job advert) Rail Transport 1 Men’s Cosmetics 1 Total 15

Advertisements

Advert Product Newspaper Year XJ(CO2xOTR)=low B1K

Automobiles (Jaguar) Daily Mail 2003

“I hereby scientifically declare; Wednesdays stink”

Food (Quorn) Daily Mail 2003

π: BEYOND INFINITY Men’s Cosmetics (Givenchy)

Corporate website

2002 ca.

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

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 car’s uniqueness

• Science, mathematics as ‘referent system’ (Williamson, 1978) guarantees truth

• BUT … let’s look XJ = low BIK XJ (CO2 x OTR) = low BIK

Other themes: sensitivity to environment

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

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”,

authoritativeHowever,…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’ OR‘just a laugh’?

π (Pi), Givenchy (2002)

π (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, π, “evokes infinity”

Image of doing mathematics: “men …still in pursuit of the end of its innumerable string of decimals”

However, hero’s quest limited, and maths reduced to long (!) tedious calculation

Overall, maths very selectively invoked

Conclusions

1. 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 meaninglessMaths generally trivialised

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

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

Further research

1. 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

Smiila’s 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.]

ReferencesAdvertisingLeiss, 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).