Developing a ‘leading identity’: the relationship between students’ mathematical identities and their career and higher education aspirations
By L. Black, J. Williams, Paul Hernandez-Martinez, P. Davis, Maria Pampaka, G. Wake. 2009
137 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The construct of identity has been used widely in mathematics education in order to understand how students (and teachers) relate to and engage with the subject (Kaasila, 2007; Sfard & Prusak, 2005; Boaler, 2002). Drawing on cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), this paper adopts Leont’ev’s notion of leading activity in order to explore the key ‘significant’ activities that are implicated in the development of students’ reflexive understanding of self and how this may offer differing relations with mathematics. According to Leont’ev (1981), leading activities are those which are significant to the development of the individual’s psyche through the emergence of new motives for engagement. We suggest that alongside new motives for engagement comes a new understanding of self—a leading identity—which reflects a hierarchy of our motives. Narrative analysis of interviews with two students (aged 16–17 years old) in post-compulsory education, Mary and Lee, are presented. Mary holds a stable ‘vocational’ leading identity throughout her narrative and, thus, her motive for studying mathematics is defined by its ‘use value’ in terms of pursuing this vocation. In contrast, Lee develops a leading identity which is focused on the activity of studying and becoming a university student. As such, his motive for study is framed in terms of the exchange value of the qualifications he hopes to obtain. We argue that this empirical grounding of leading activity and leading identity offers new insights into students’ identity development.
Subfields: Education, Human Factors and Ergonomics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/707dec1f2815d936140057aae28928220d3161b2
How researchers see this paper
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In Education
- J. Williams
- Sonja Lutovac
- Wolff‐Michael Roth
- Raimo Kaasila
- Maria Pampaka
- Paul Hernandez-Martinez
- G. Wake
- P. Davis
In Human Factors and Ergonomics
- Wolff‐Michael Roth
- J. Williams
- D. Nussbaumer
- Lisa C. Yamagata-Lynch
- Deoksoon Kim
- Einat Heyd‑Metzuyanim
Citations in the corpus
- Students' views on their transition from school to college mathematics: rethinking ‘transition’ as an issue of identity (2011, background): “In this sense, we have argued elsewhere (Black et al. 2010) that a student’s ‘leading identity’ defines their motive for study and shapes their relationship with mathematics.”
- Cultural-historical activity theory: Vygotsky’s forgotten and suppressed legacy and its implication for mathematics education (2012, background): “From a cultural-historical activity theoretic perspective, it does not make sense to think about “mathematics identity” in the way some mathematics educators do (e.g., Nyamekye 2010), including those subscribing to the theory (e.g., Black et al. 2010).”
- Pre-service teachers’ future-oriented mathematical identity work (2014, methodology): “During the last decade, identity has been analysed extensively in the contexts of teacher education (Rodgers & Scott, 2008; Kaasila & Lauriala, 2010; Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009) and mathematics education research (Black et al., 2010; Brown & McNamara, 2011; Kaasila, 2007a; Lutovac & Kaasila, 2011).”
- An overview of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) use in classroom research 2000 to 2009 (2012, background): “( 2009 ) drew on Leont’ev’s levels and “leading activity”, a form of self image and self esteem, to investigate activities involved in the development of the “self” in relation to mathematics.”