Mathematical Discourse as Group Cognition [chapter]

Gerry Stahl
2009 Studying Virtual Math Teams  
This chapter reviews Anna Sfard's book, Thinking as communicating: Human development, the growth of discourses and mathematizing (Sfard, 2008) . It highlights insights of the book that are relevant to studying virtual math teams as well as calling for further analysis to situate Sfard's theory within the discourses of CSCL and socio-cultural theory. Anna Sfard raised the methodological discourse in the CSCL community to a higher niveau of self-understanding a decade ago with her analysis of our
more » ... two prevalent metaphors for learning: the acquisition metaphor (AM) and the participation metaphor (PM). Despite her persuasive argument in favor of PM and a claim that AM and PM are as incommensurable as day and night, she asked us to retain the use of both metaphors and to take them as complementary in the sense of the quantum particle/wave theory, concluding that Our work is bound to produce a patchwork of metaphors rather than a unified, homogenous theory of learning. (Sfard, 1998, p. 12)
doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-0228-3_3 fatcat:cnlugntt6rherk2wn5gar2mseu