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Cultural Development of Mathematical Ideas

Papua New Guinea Studies

Hardcover

Published: 28th September 2012
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Drawing upon field studies conducted in 1978, 1980 and 2001 with the Oksapmin, a remote Papua New Guinea group, Geoffrey B. Saxe traces the emergence of new forms of numerical representations and ideas in the social history of the community. In traditional life, the Oksapmin used a counting system that makes use of twenty-seven parts of the body; there is no evidence that the group used arithmetic in prehistory. As practices of economic exchange and schooling have shifted, children and adults unwittingly reproduced and altered the system in order to solve new kinds of numerical and arithmetical problems, a process that has led to new forms of collective representations in the community. While Dr Saxe's focus is on the Oksapmin, the insights and general framework he provides are useful for understanding shifting representational forms and emerging cognitive functions in any human community.

Introduction
The Origins of Number-Enduring Questions
Culture-cognition relations
Cultural forms of number representation used in Oksapmin communities
Economic Exchange
Collective practices of economic exchange: a brief social history
Reproduction and alteration of numerical representations
Reproduction and alteration in currency token representations
Representational forms, functions, collective practices, and fu: a microcosm
Schooling
A brief history: collective practices of schooling in Oksapmin
Unschooled children's developing uses of the body system
Children's adaptations of the body system in school in 1980: an unintended consequence of postcolonial schooling
About twenty years later: schooling and number
Teachers and students as (unintentional) agents of change
Towards an Integrated Treatment of Socio-Historical and Cognitive Developmental Processes
What develops? A focus on form-function relations
How do quantification practices develop?
Why do form-function relations shift?
Epilogue
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 9780521761666
ISBN-10: 0521761662
Series: Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives
Audience: Tertiary; University or College
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 416
Published: 28th September 2012
Dimensions (cm): 22.8 x 15.2  x 2.8
Weight (kg): 0.67