5.3 Mapping Social Factors that Inform Students’ Perceptions and Conceptions of Mathematics - 90
5.3.5 Perceived Usefulness of Mathematics to Post Graduate Social Science Students
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5.3.5 Perceived Usefulness of Mathematics to Post Graduate Social Science Students
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their children with their tasks, reinforcing what was taught at school and supporting where they can. Asked whether they had any form of assistance with mathematics at home, it was concluded from their submissions that the parents involvement in the students’ mathematics learning was very limited mainly due to the parents’ busy schedules or their educational background is not mathematics orientated and alternatively engaged the services of private tutorship. For some students, the parents could not assist because they were not educated and thus the students were assisted by other classmates or siblings. This therefore emphasises the role of family in transferring the cultural capital that is dominant in the family.
Given the privilege of private tutorship specifically in mathematics, one would expect that those students would have excelled in the subject. However most of them did not. Instead it was those who had had no assistance at home or any form of private tutorship that succeeded in mathematics throughout their schooling and higher education. Those who said mathematics was of value to them were quoted as follows:
Student 4: “More time spent on working out mathematics problems, had to do preparations outside class... I even competed in a maths olympiad”.
Student 10: “There was not a day that I would go to bed without having done some maths exercises.. It did me good”
Student
In other words, most of the students had been exposed to similar social, educational, economic and backgrounds that emphasised mathematics learning except for the few that worked their way up. It seems however that there is more to mathematics achievement than it being an entitlement to access the dominant culture. What this suggests is that there is a collision between agency and culture in determining learning behaviour and that is “culture is articulated in social behaviour and precisely social action” (DiTella and MacCulloch, 2006:9). The submissions suggests the differences in the human capital or cultural dispositions that are embedded in the students’ habitus, which direct the student’s learning behaviour to some ends and not others as Bourdieu argues.
The students’ responses were also a clear indication of how socially defined meanings drive what society wants for the students or the students’ parents as members of society. It seems from these responses that what the students study is influenced by what the teachers and
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parents have found to be important for them such that the students’ choice fits to what this network of social relations has defined as ‘important’. As noted in how the students perceive the usefulness of mathematics for their ends, it is concluded that “the objective availability of opportunities is of little use for those who lack the suitable cultural equipment” (Swindler, 1986 as quoted by Rubenstein 2001:117). In other words, we may have similar aspirations in life but they are only achieved by those who have the cultural tools to actualise them.
Few of the study participants had assistance at home or any form of private tutorship yet they excelled in mathematics. They have attributed this to the continuous practicing of mathematical problems, as well as to preparation for class prior to the session at school. This endorses the literature in emphasising the positive effects of learning mathematics by doing.
The students admitted that, although there were those aspects of mathematical applications that they had found to be removed from real life, they could however make linkages between some mathematical applications learnt in class and their daily lives. There is also a recurring pattern that suggests an interconnection between students’ perceptions of mathematics and the students’ learning orientations. Learning orientations are described in the literature as
“giving a ‘personal context’ to studying that includes a consideration of the person’s aims, values and purposes for study” (Entwistle et al 2004:413). These responses confirm that the students had not done mathematics for themselves but they had done it because it had been driven as a ticket to great things. In other words, it was not perceived as useful in achieving the ends that the students had aimed to achieve. It is therefore not surprising that the students who did not apply themselves, regardless of privilege of private tutorship did not do well in mathematics. Parajes et al (1994:195) confirmed the consistency between students’ perceived usefulness of mathematics and their performance. Mathematics clearly had no utility value for most members of this social group. They however do not dispute that it is useful generally.
5.3.2 The Perceived Usefulness of Mathematics to Post Graduate Social Sciences by the study respondents
The quotes that are omitted are already represented in the quotes below. The students were quoted as follows:
Student 1: “Mathematics is relevant because it validates knowledge”
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Student 6: “It is useful in quantitative research”
Student 8: “It is useful in statistical analysis”
Student 9: “It is useful because everything you do has some mathematical implications”
Student 10: “Stats and maths are really not that similar, you need the problem solving skills though”
Student 12: “In analysis but not hectic maths”
The students acknowledged the usefulness of mathematics in the social sciences as a subset of statistics or as a language in which statistical or quantitative research is delivered. Others chose to separate the courses as two separate entities. Generally, the usefulness of mathematics in the social sciences was acknowledged.