Performing Math tells the history of expectations for math communication—and the conversations about math hatred and math anxiety that occurred in response. Focusing on nineteenth-century American colleges, this book analyzes foundational tools and techniques of math communication: the textbooks that supported reading aloud, the burnings that mimicked pedagogical speech, the blackboards that accompanied oral presentations, the plays that proclaimed performers’ identities as math students, and the written tests that redefined “student performance.” Math communication and math anxiety went hand in hand as new rules for oral communication at the blackboard inspired student revolt and as frameworks for testing student performance inspired performance anxiety. With unusual primary sources from over a dozen educational archives, Performing Math argues for a new, performance-oriented history of American math education, one that can explain contemporary math attitudes and provide a way forward to reframing the problem of math anxiety.
Author(s): Andrew Fiss
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 214
City: New Brunswick
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Preface
Introduction
1. How Math Communication Has Started with Reading Aloud
2. How Math Communication Has Been Practiced in Prohibited Ways
3. How Math Anxiety Has Developed from Classroom Tech
4. How Math Communication Has Been Theatrical
5. How Math Anxiety Became about Written Testing
Conclusion: Math Communication from STEM to STEAM
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About the Author
