From Mathematical Micro- to Macro-identities

This paper aims to better understand how students’ moment-to-moment micro-identities thicken into macro-identities, focusing specifically on one student, Tia, as a mathematical authority. Our analysis involved identifying the ideas that students proposed, how they were responded to, and the mathematical micro-identities (Wood, 2013) at play during these interactions. Findings (1) reveal the relationship between how this teacher-researcher and her students proposed and responded to ideas and how they were positioned into mathematical micro-identities; (2) confirm Wood’s (2013) findings regarding the nature of positioning into micro-identities; and (3) build on Wood’s framework to describe how micro-identities can be nuanced, or specialized. Our findings help explain how moment-to-moment positioning contributes to the development of one student’s macro-identity as a mathematical authority.

Mathematical logic · Mathematical model · Mathematical problem · Mathematical structure · Mathematical theory · Cognitive and developmental aspects of mathematical skills · Mathematics Education and Teaching Techniques · Science Education and Pedagogy