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ABSTRACT
The analytical scheme used in the project The Evolution of the Discourse of School Mathematics (EDSM) was developed to analyse the change over time in examination texts. An adapted version of the EDSM scheme has been deployed to analyse the nature of mathematics construed in Palestinian schools’ textbooks and the mathematical activity expected of students in the geometry textbooks for students aged 10 to 16 years. The adaptation includes adding further tools for analysing visual components of texts, as well as accounting for some differences between English and Arabic. This article outlines these adaptations and illustrates the use of the adapted scheme with a different genre of texts from those studied in the EDSM project. Some of the challenges in the adaptation process in relation to Arabic mathematics discourse are discussed.
Acknowledgment
Many thanks to Candia Morgan, Anna Sfard, Jill Adler and the anonymous reviewers for their comments, which made this article more coherent.
ORCID
Jehad Alshwaikh http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7677-5003
Notes
1. (a) is taken from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/03/alex-belllos-monday-puzzle-question-area-maze-smarter-than-japanese-schoolchild; and (b) is taken from http://www.mathsisfun.com/quadrilaterals.html
2. In English, the words for more specific types of measure (e.g. length) are more commonly used. I use the noun measure here as a translation for the original Arabic in order to reflect as closely as possible the cognate relationship between the noun and verb in Arabic.
3. In Arabic pronouns may be either separated or attached to a subject or an object. The three mentioned pronouns come in different forms but I am not going to burden the reader by introducing these forms in detail here.