1st Edition

The Mastery of Reason Cognitive Development and the Production of Rationality

By Valerie Walkerdine Copyright 1988
238 Pages
by Routledge

238 Pages
by Routledge

Originally published in 1988, The Mastery of Reason is, on one level, a study of children’s cognitive development. It engages with debates about the ‘individual’ and the ‘social context’ in accounts of children’s mathematical development at the time. However, Valerie Walkerdine seeks to go beyond these debates to establish the empirical and theoretical base for a different kind of understanding... Read more

Acknowledgements.  1. Introduction  2. Relational Terms in Everyday Social Practices: More or Less Reconsidered  3. The Insertion of Size and Family Terms in School and Experimental Practices  4. Size and Family Relations in Home Practices  5. Practices in Which Numeracy is Produced  6. School Mathematics as a Discursive Practice: Beginnings  7. 2p Doesn’t Buy Much These Days: Learning About Money at Home and at School  8. The Achievement of Mastery  9. Pleasure and the Mastery of Reason  10. The Practices of Reason.  References.  Index.

Biography

Valerie Walkerdine FRSA, FLSW, FAcSS is Distinguished Research Professor Emerita in the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Visiting Professor in the London School of Economics and Political Science, one of the editors of Ideology and Consciousness (I and C), co-author of Changing the Subject (Routledge), Editor of Subjectivity (Palgrave) and author of many books and journal articles.

Review for the original edition:

‘Walkerdine displays a splendid ability to make innovative interpretations of the ways children struggle to learn mathematics … At their most successful, her arguments may intelligently divert educators from their math warpath and suggest some new directions. In so doing Walkerdine is protecting children from what we, as she so observantly states, ‘subject’ them to. She is a math advocate not only for children, but also for adults who still strive to understand why mathematics can inflict such terror and pain.’ – C. Bluhm, Human Development