1st Edition

What Does Understanding Mathematics Mean for Teachers? Relationship as a Metaphor for Knowing

By Yuichi Handa Copyright 2011
    164 Pages
    by Routledge

    182 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book opens up alternative ways of thinking and talking about ways in which a person can "know" a subject (in this case, mathematics), leading to a reconsideration of what it may mean to be a teacher of that subject.

    In a number of European languages, a distinction is made in ways of knowing that in the English language is collapsed into the singular word know. In French, for example, to know in the savoir sense is to know things, facts, names, how and why things work, and so on, whereas to know in the connaître sense is to know a person, a place, or even a thing—namely, an other— in such a way that one is familiar with, or in relationship with this other. Primarily through phenomenological reflection with a touch of empirical input, this book fleshes out an image for what a person’s connaître knowing of mathematics might mean, turning to mathematics teachers and teacher educators to help clarify this image.

    Preface

    Acknowledgments

    1: Introduction to a Phenomenon

    1.9: A Tangent Prior to the Rise (and Run)

    2: Relationship As Reciprocity: Grace

    3: A Bringing Forth Of Self: Will

    4: Relationship as Interest

    5: "Doing" Mathematics and Its Relation to the Life Path of Being a Mathematics Teacher/Educator

    An Epilogue in Two Parts

    Part 1: Returning to the Episode of the Straitjacket

    Part 2: Relationship as a Returning: Going Past "Understanding"

    Appendix: A Narrativized "Methodology"

    References

    Biography

    Yuichi Handa is Assistant Professor of Mathematics, California State University, Chico.