Mathematics identity among students in an elite high school in China

Abstract

This study characterizes the mathematics identity among students in an elite high school in China, with a focus on the various social agents that shape identity, including the public sector, the private sector, parents and the individual students. Building on Schoenfeld’s teaching for robust understanding (TRU) framework, the study characterizes the students’ mathematics identities through the lens of their sense of agency and ownership, which include the results of analysis of the perception, appreciation and action that the students used in their judgments and practices in mathematics learning to provide rich explanations of how context shapes the formation of students’ mathematics identities. Drawing upon a one-year fieldwork on mathematics teaching and learning in Grade 11 of an elite high school and its related communities in a metropolitan city located in southern China, the study shows three typical types of mathematical ownership emerging from the data—the individual, public and private sectors are the major agents and shapers of high school mathematics. The research discovers that such constructive typology of mathematics identity among students represents the underlying structural tensions among individuals, the public and private sectors. The study calls for understanding Chinese students’ mathematics learning from a new and dynamic perspective—the transition in the structure of Chinese education in the past decades. On the one hand, schools have become less completely state agencies. The current public education gives way to the private sector, which is market oriented. On the other hand, the rapidly expanding market, which keeps grabbing significant economic resources from parents, gives rise to an increasingly brutal and competitive learning environment. This makes students subconsciously realize and recognize that who is a mathematics person is largely shaped by the resources available to the student. They are becoming less accountable for their own mathematics learning, as they tend to give up their own individual agencies and ownership to external authorities, especially the private sector.