3.3 Students’ Perceptions of the Learning Environment
3.3.4 Students Orientations and out-of Classroom Pressures/ Social Structures
Entwistle and Peterson (2004:413) defines learning orientations as “giving a personal context to studying that includes a consideration of the person’s aims, values and purposes for study”.
While there are so many out of school classroom activities and factors that structure the way students perceive and conceive mathematics as well as influence the direction of students’
study orientations, the study focuses on in classroom and out of classroom factors that influence how students come to define their self concept and capabilities towards mathematics.
3.3.4.1 Social Background and Mathematics Achievement
Numerous studies note how mathematics achievement is prefigured by the social backgrounds that students are a product of. Mathematics learning therefore is a process of
“socialising students in the norms and discourse practices of the mathematics class” and as such, social backgrounds need to be considered (Sammuelsson and Granstrom 2007:154).
Stromquist (2007:7) states that socialization is a central concept used by social theorists to explain how culture is maintained in society and to account for changes in culture in society.
The author notes that the process of socialization is a collision between the individual and the collective life by “moulding members into compliance and cooperation with social requirements”, noting that “the process is not predetermined, because individuals may question and reject certain cultural features”. In other words, the process is reflexive and non rigid in the process of ‘identity formation’.
The process of socialization is continuous and it occurs as the individual interacts with the social environment and it occurs in various social contexts including school and out of school. (Stromquist 2007:7) notes that “socialization in the schools, touches on the informal (hidden) curriculum is a critical dimension of schooling through which educational settings may introduce changes in social perceptions or, conversely, continue to reproduce traditional values and attitudes and it includes the activities already discussed above such as teacher- student relationship, teacher conceptions among others.
Sammuelsson et al (2007:154) further notes family socialization has a key role in socialising children to be competent in mathematics. The authors state that students from homes not so
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interested in the child’s school attendance seem to have a more negative attitude to mathematics than students from more supportive and well-educated homes.
Taking the argument further, Wilson (2011:111) states that parents are central in young people’s consideration of their aspirations. The role of the family has been applauded by teachers in students’ academic success and as a result family socialisation prefigures student’s career paths and the courses to pursue and drop.
It is not every activity that parents do with children that is associated with their children’s competence in mathematics learning, but it is specifically parental involvement and a supportive home learning environment and parents expectations and motivation for their children’s educational pursuits (Mason, 2010:195). The key roles played by parents in their children’s education have been identified by Henderson and Belar (1994:29) as follows:
parents as teachers where they are hands on in assisting their children with their tasks or reinforcing what was taught at school and as supporters where parents provide any assistance they can . Although Morgan and Sorensen, (1999:674) note that parents do not always know best, particularly because their skills tend to be fade with the passing of time and they become unable to understand recent mathematical operations as they differ from those that they learnt when they were young or due to lack of education themselves; but support and encouragement are timeless and are not limited to content.
In using Bourdieu’s language, the familial habitus has a structuring effect on what children come to understand and know themselves and their capabilities to be at school. Young people also tend to align their choice of majors and disciplines at university with what are acceptable within their families (Reay,1998:526). This therefore suggests that the choices and their educational preferences are mediated by the cultural capital embedded in their habitus as a result of interaction between agency and the familial habitus. The students’ cultural capital is then displayed in their choices and preferences, as the institutional habitus and the students’
agency collide during classroom interactions. Wilson (2011:111) maintains that students’
personal aspirations should be taken into account in judging their path to future study pursuits as their educational aspirations keep on changing, particularly when they encounter some challenging situations and educational constraints.
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3.3.4.2 Race, Class, Gender and Mathematics education
Literature notes that there is a growing recognition of the interplay between race, class and gender factors in the construction of student identities that in schools positions some students at a disadvantage than others (Sammuelsson et al 2007:154; Grant and Sleeter 1986:185). In other words, in living life, people are wrestling with predefined class, gender, and race social worlds. One way race has been confirmed to rear its ugly head is through language in RSA students’ performance in mathematics. Students tend to “achieve higher scores in mathematics when their language proficiency in English was higher and were more likely to attain low scores in mathematics when their scores on the English test were low and those that spoke English or Afrikaans at home tended to achieve higher scores in mathematics”
(Howie 3002:13). This is much to the detriment of those who speak African languages as the official media of instruction is English or Afrikaans. Weis (1988:79) also notes that the teacher may even forget the students names because she/he cannot pronounce them and as such those students’ presence is not appreciated to the extent that the child may even be forgotten when they are selected for certain activities.
The segregation of students into black and white is a common feature in most schools with white associated with achievement and black with failure. Tyson (2011:8) notes that the practice of ability grouping in schools (as noted earlier) or placements of students according to’ gifted’ or ‘talented’ contributes to the process that sets racial groups on different academic paths. It sends the message to students that ability, race, status prefigure achievement. These placements influence how students come to understand their educational capabilities and their sense of place in the social environment as well as how resources are allocated in the education system. Tyson (2011:8) argues that placing the locus of social ills on individuals rather than social and economic conditions is an ill- informed way of addressing those social ills.
Reay (1991:180) states that the gender related disparities between male and female students stem from socio-cultural rather than biological factors with social class at the centre of the gender related activities. The author notes that these include issues of self esteem, confidence issues and perceptions of usefulness of mathematics particularly in male dominated or
‘masculine’ fields of study like maths and science. The author further notes that social class issues tend to cut across gender and race issues where children from upper class families tend
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to command the teachers’ attention much to the disadvantage of those from the lower echelons of society as the classroom is one social sphere where valued cultural capital is rewarded and unvalued cultural capital punished. As noted in Bourdieu’s theory, even though people might have the same aspirations, it is only those who possess the valued cultural capital that are recognised. Mathematics learning is no exception to this social practice.