The problem of context when doing "maths"

Evans, J., & Tsatsaroni, A. (2000). Mathematics and its publics: texts, contexts and users. Social Epistemology, 14(1), 55-68.

Fundamentally, Evans and Tsatsaroni set out to problematise context in a number of ways and contend that mathematical knowledge is not preserved across contexts. This in turn problematises the transfer of learning and skills across contexts. They suggest that context itself needs to be read as text and that such readings are multiple, mutable, ambiguous, and open. This is an acknowledgement of the Bakhtinian view of language and discourse as subject to conservative and creative forces, polyphonic, dialogic, heteroglossic and dialogical (see Bakhtin, 1986 & 1981).

They also raise the issue of identity and how subjectivity is implicated and constituted within discursive formations. For example doing mathematics in a classroom and doing mathematics in a shop involve different social practices with differing purposes and constraints often demanding dissimilar types of answer.

Classroom mathematics texts are often independent of context and arise from educational discourses rather than everyday life discourses. Social relationships also are profoundly different in the two contexts with varying power configurations. For example in educational discourses students occupy specific spaces in hierarchical formations and through repeated subjugation come to view their identities as natural (see Graham, 2005). Thus quite contrasting subjectivities are constituted as different “performative language and intertextual reference contribute to and enhance the constitutive properties” (Graham, 2005, p.6) of the diverse discourses.

Evans and Tsatsaroni employ the term positioning when talking of subjectivities to counter an over-deterministic view of the constraints of discourse and to highlight the reality of agency. “Positioning in our view both supports and constrains the subject, in that it puts some limits on the play of signifiers, on the production of meaning, but is unable to limit all potential ambiguities in mathematical meanings and in `mathematical’ subjects” (p. 61).

They note a number of problems associated with a simplistic traditional view of the transfer of skills across contexts. These include describing the task, the neglect of the complexity of social practices and discourse in different contexts and the assumption of generalization and recontextualisation in new situations. They propose that translation across contexts require more, not less, attention to contexts and their associated signifiers, discourses, practices.

Bakhtin, one of the great Russian Linguistics is a key influence on this paper, so a few key refernces to his majors works might be in order here:
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press.

Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (V. McGee, Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press.

The seeds of Bakhtin’s approach to language are actually found in the following book which is seldom if ever cited by Bakhtin fans! It was written much early than the two above.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1993). Toward a philosophy of the act (V. Liapunov, Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.