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Science and Mathematics Education Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Science and Mathematics Education
Parts Of The Whole: Strategies For The Spread Of Quantitative Literacy: What Models Can Tell Us, Dorothy Wallace
Parts Of The Whole: Strategies For The Spread Of Quantitative Literacy: What Models Can Tell Us, Dorothy Wallace
Numeracy
Two conceptual frameworks, one from graph theory and one from dynamical systems, have been offered as explanations for complex phenomena in biology and also as possible models for the spread of ideas. The two models are based on different assumptions and thus predict quite different outcomes for the fate of either biological species or ideas. We argue that, depending on the culture in which they exist, one can identify which model is more likely to reflect the survival of two competing ideas. Based on this argument we suggest how two strategies for embedding and normalizing quantitative literacy in a given …
Looking At The Multiple Meanings Of Numeracy, Quantitative Literacy, And Quantitative Reasoning, H. L. Vacher
Looking At The Multiple Meanings Of Numeracy, Quantitative Literacy, And Quantitative Reasoning, H. L. Vacher
Numeracy
The subject of this journal goes by a variety of names: numeracy, quantitative literacy, and quantitative reasoning. Some authors use the terms interchangeably. Others see distinctions between them. Study of psycholinguistic and ontological concepts laid out in the literature of WordNet and familiarity with the papers in this journal suggests a vocabulary matrix consisting of four rows (word senses) and three columns (word forms, namely numeracy, QL, and QR). The four word senses correspond to four sets of synonyms: {numeracy}, {numeracy, QL}, {QL, QR}, and {numeracy, QL, QR}. Each of the word forms is polysemous: “numeracy” points to the first, …
Parts Of The Whole: Only Connect, Dorothy Wallace
Parts Of The Whole: Only Connect, Dorothy Wallace
Numeracy
This is the first of several columns that will focus on the mechanisms by which new ideas become accepted by a culture, offering some familiar examples, deriving basic principles from these examples, and applying them to the problem of promoting quantitative literacy in an educational system. In this essay we describe how new concepts become embedded in a culture through their connections to existing ideas, and use this principle to suggest strategies of discourse about numeracy that promote it among various constituencies in the culture.