‘I’m still making dots for them’: mathematics lecturers’ views on their mathematical modelling practices
Using Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, we analyze lecturers’ views on the aims and teaching practices of mathematical modelling (MM) education in Norway and England. We aim to expose the tensio...
Connections of Science Capital and the Teaching and Learning of Mathematical Modelling: An Introduction
This chapter is an introduction to the theoretical concept of science capital. It also serves as an introduction to the next three chapters of this book. These ensuing chapters all connect mathematical modelling education to science capital. In short, science capital is a set of resources that offer people advantages within scientific contexts. For example, a friend who works in research can be a resource to better understand the gist of science. Not all people have such friends, and the underlying sociological theory of Bourdieu explains how inequities are caused by some people having better access to science capital than others. In this chapter, we explain how the concept of science capit…
“Why do I have to learn this?” A case study on students’ experiences of the relevance of mathematical modelling activities
In this paper we explore how students can experience the relevance of mathematical modelling activities. In the literature we found that relevance is a connection among several issues (relevance of what? to whom? according to whom? and to what end?). We framed this concept in terms of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), a theory for analysing how individuals engage in activities within social environments. We designed modelling activities within a mathematics course for engineering students: there were ample mathematical modelling tasks, a guest lecture by an employee from an engine company who used mathematical modelling in his job, and a group work modelling assessment with a pres…