Challenges and Successes in Studying Children's Thinking and Learning in an Everyday Collective Practice : A Mixed Methods Approach / Geoffrey B. Saxe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Saxe, Geoffrey B., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Economics--Brazil.

Economics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

London : SAGE Publications Ltd, 2025.

Summary:

This Case Study describes methods used in an intensive study of the collective practice of candy selling and the mathematical understandings that 6- to 15-year-old sellers create as they engage with the practice. The site for the study was Recife, a large urban center in northeastern Brazil. The original research was published in my book, Culture and cognitive development: Studies in mathematical understandings. I begin with (a) the decisions that led to candy selling as the focus of my research; then I describe (b) the development of techniques for documenting selling practices through intensive observations, (c) the design of practice-linked interview tasks to probe sellers' mathematical thinking, and (d) the construction of coding schemes to quantify sellers' mathematical problem-solving strategies on the interview tasks. In the final phase, (d) I used the outcome of coded interviews to address important questions about sellers' mathematics. To understand whether sellers developed mathematical understandings related to their practice, I contrasted sellers with same-age nonsellers; to understand developmental changes in sellers' math, I contrasted sellers of different ages who had little or no schooling on the practice-linked tasks; and to understand the interplay between schooling and sellers' mathematical understandings, I contrasted same-aged sellers with different levels of schooling on the practice-linked tasks as well as same-grade sellers' performances on coded school-linked mathematical tasks. My descriptions of the suite of methods that I employed illustrate the benefits of mixed-methods case study research as well as its challenges.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-03-621648-9

9781036216481

OCLC:

1523170295