Learning not to think in a textbook-based mathematics class

Abstract This study coordinates anthropological and cognitive perspectives on one child's learning of the standard addition algorithm. Changes in the child's mathematical beliefs and constructions were analyzed as he moved from a experimental 2nd-grade mathematics class characterized by inquiry mathematics to a textbook-based third grade. Piagetian clinical interviews focusing on this mathematical understanding before, during, and after 8 weeks of instruction in third grade were coordinated with an interactional analysis of a typical textbook lesson selected from a larger microethnographic study of his classroom mathematical community. The resulting description of the social norms and mathematical practices of this community provide a background against which the child's mathematical development is examined. The analysis shows that he had abandoned his self-generated computational algorithms in favor of less understood conventional procedures.