Semiotics in Mathematics Education : epistemology, history, classroom, and culture

Current interest in semiotics is undoubtedly related to our increasing awareness that our manners of thinking and acting in our world are deeply indebted to a variety of signs and sign systems (language included) that surround us. Since mathematics is something that we accomplish through written, oral, bodily and other signs, semiotics appears well suited to furthering our understanding of the mathematical processes of thinking, symbolizing and communicating. Resorting to different semiotic perspectives (e.g., Peirce's, Vygotsky's, Saussure's), the authors of this book deal with questions about the teaching and learning of mathematics as well as the history and epistemology of the discipline. Mathematics discourse and thinking and the technologically-mediated self of mathematical cultural practices are examined through key concepts such as metaphor, intentionality, gestures, interaction, sign-use, and meaning. This book is addressed to mathematics educators, psychologists, educators, and students of mathematics education. About the editors Luis Radford is Full Professor at Laurentian University in Canada. His research interests include the investigation of mathematics thinking and knowing from a cultural-semiotic perspective. For many years he has been conducting classroom research with primary and high-school teachers about the teaching and learning of mathematics as well as the historical and cultural roots of cognition. Gert Schubring is department head at the Institut fr Didaktik der Mathematik at Bielefeld University, Germany. His research interests focus on the history of mathematics and the sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and on their systemic interrelation with socio-cultural systems. Falk Seeger is retired from a position of Senior Lecturer at the Institut fr Didaktik der Mathematik at Bielefeld University, Germany. His research interests include the analysis of mathematical learning from a cultural-historical perspective. In his current work, he puts a focus on the semiotic roots of intentionality in human development, drawing heavily on Vygotsky's work and on Peirce's ideas. The cover picture comes from Jacob Leupold's (1727) Theatrum Arithmetico-Geometrico. It conveys the cultural, historical, and embodied aspects of mathematical thinking variously emphasized by the contributors of this book.