Examining mathematical reasoning through enacted visualisation
- Authors: Dongwi, Beata Lididimikeni
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Visualization , Mathematics -- Study and teaching -- Namibia , Mathematics -- Study and teaching -- Audio-visual aids , Geometry -- Study and teaching , Reasoning , Mathematical ability
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/68192 , vital:29217
- Description: This study sets out to analyse the co-emergence of visualisation and reasoning processes when selected learners engaged in solving word problems. The study argues that visualisation processes and mathematical reasoning processes are closely interlinked in the process of engaging in any mathematical activity. This qualitative research project adopted a case study methodology embedded within a broader interpretative orientation. The research participants were a cohort of 17 mixedgender and mixed-ability Grade 11 learners from a private school in southern Namibia. Data was collected in three phases and comprised of one-on-one task-based interviews in the first phase, focus group task-based interviews in the second, and semi-structured reflective interviews in the third. The analytical framework was informed by elements of enactivism and consisted of a hybrid of observable visualisation and mathematical reasoning indicators. The study was framed by an enactivist perspective that served as a linking mediator to bring visualisation and reasoning processes together, and as a lens through which the coemergence of these processes was observed and analysed. The key enactivist concepts of structural coupling and co-emergence were the two mediating ideas that enabled me to discuss the links between visualisation and reasoning that emerged whilst my participants solved the set word problems. The study argues that the visualisation processes enacted by the participants when solving these problems are inseparable from the reasoning processes that the participants brought to bear; that is, they co-emerged.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Dongwi, Beata Lididimikeni
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Visualization , Mathematics -- Study and teaching -- Namibia , Mathematics -- Study and teaching -- Audio-visual aids , Geometry -- Study and teaching , Reasoning , Mathematical ability
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/68192 , vital:29217
- Description: This study sets out to analyse the co-emergence of visualisation and reasoning processes when selected learners engaged in solving word problems. The study argues that visualisation processes and mathematical reasoning processes are closely interlinked in the process of engaging in any mathematical activity. This qualitative research project adopted a case study methodology embedded within a broader interpretative orientation. The research participants were a cohort of 17 mixedgender and mixed-ability Grade 11 learners from a private school in southern Namibia. Data was collected in three phases and comprised of one-on-one task-based interviews in the first phase, focus group task-based interviews in the second, and semi-structured reflective interviews in the third. The analytical framework was informed by elements of enactivism and consisted of a hybrid of observable visualisation and mathematical reasoning indicators. The study was framed by an enactivist perspective that served as a linking mediator to bring visualisation and reasoning processes together, and as a lens through which the coemergence of these processes was observed and analysed. The key enactivist concepts of structural coupling and co-emergence were the two mediating ideas that enabled me to discuss the links between visualisation and reasoning that emerged whilst my participants solved the set word problems. The study argues that the visualisation processes enacted by the participants when solving these problems are inseparable from the reasoning processes that the participants brought to bear; that is, they co-emerged.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
Intersectionality and complexity in the representation of ‘queer’ sexualities and genders in African women’s short fiction
- Authors: Du Preez, Jenny Boźena
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Sexual minority culture , Sexual minorities' writings , African fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism , Gender identity in literature , Short stories, South African , Feminism in literature , Political poetry , Eroticism in literature , Lesbianism in literature
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/119047 , vital:34697
- Description: This thesis sets out to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about queer sexualities and genders in Africa by examining their depiction in selected post-2000 African women’s short fiction written in English. Post-2000, the short story form has become the primary vehicle for queer representations by African women writers, and is thus an important development in the burgeoning body of queer literature by African writers. Broadly speaking, this literary formation can be defined as anti-homophobic, feminist and politically pragmatic. Using an intersectional lens, this thesis sets out to examine four significant strands in the political work these stories engage in. The chapters are structured around four main points of contention that have particular significance at the intersection of ‘queer’, ‘women’ and ‘Africa’. Firstly, I examine South African short stories that perform what I call queer conversations with history: imaginatively asserting a queer South African history, writing back against a male-dominated and heterosexist literary canon and, in doing so, contributing to the reimagination of the contemporary South African nation. Secondly, I analyse short stories from Africa that foreground the family, both as social formation and ideology. I examine how these stories ‘fracture’ this powerful and naturalised heterosexist concept by depicting the tensions and contradictions that queer characters experience in relation to family. Thirdly, I consider short stories from various African contexts that work to reconceptualise queer sexuality in relation to religious discourse in order to challenge homophobic and patriarchal religious authority. Finally, I examine queer, feminist erotic short stories by African women writers that challenges various colonialist, racist, sexist and lesbophobic discourses that have historically stifled the portrayal of sex and erotic experience between women.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Du Preez, Jenny Boźena
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Sexual minority culture , Sexual minorities' writings , African fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism , Gender identity in literature , Short stories, South African , Feminism in literature , Political poetry , Eroticism in literature , Lesbianism in literature
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/119047 , vital:34697
- Description: This thesis sets out to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about queer sexualities and genders in Africa by examining their depiction in selected post-2000 African women’s short fiction written in English. Post-2000, the short story form has become the primary vehicle for queer representations by African women writers, and is thus an important development in the burgeoning body of queer literature by African writers. Broadly speaking, this literary formation can be defined as anti-homophobic, feminist and politically pragmatic. Using an intersectional lens, this thesis sets out to examine four significant strands in the political work these stories engage in. The chapters are structured around four main points of contention that have particular significance at the intersection of ‘queer’, ‘women’ and ‘Africa’. Firstly, I examine South African short stories that perform what I call queer conversations with history: imaginatively asserting a queer South African history, writing back against a male-dominated and heterosexist literary canon and, in doing so, contributing to the reimagination of the contemporary South African nation. Secondly, I analyse short stories from Africa that foreground the family, both as social formation and ideology. I examine how these stories ‘fracture’ this powerful and naturalised heterosexist concept by depicting the tensions and contradictions that queer characters experience in relation to family. Thirdly, I consider short stories from various African contexts that work to reconceptualise queer sexuality in relation to religious discourse in order to challenge homophobic and patriarchal religious authority. Finally, I examine queer, feminist erotic short stories by African women writers that challenges various colonialist, racist, sexist and lesbophobic discourses that have historically stifled the portrayal of sex and erotic experience between women.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
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