Mathemat-ing

When matter matters

Abstract

Based on a posthumanist perspective, this article examines how mathematics emerges in the practice of Swedish school-age Educare, fritidshem. This educational offer has a focus on complementing and compensating school and on providing meaningful leisure before and after the regular school-day. As a change of policy in 2016 introduced explicit attention to some content areas such as mathematics, the question of how would practitioners interpret, translate and enact “mathematics” in their practice emerged as a concern for research. The question to be explored in this article is: how do mathematics emerge through engagements and relationships between human and non-human materiality, in the discursive practices of school-age Educare? The overall aim is to provide an alternative way to conceive of the mathematical in this context, to maintain the possibility of a practice that is distinct from school and that can resist the trend of schoolification of educational spaces and of children’s lives.

The mathematics that is discussed in this article challenges the notion of mathematics often associated with the organization of content and competence in compulsory school. Instead, it takes as a point of departure the idea of mathematizing which refers to children’s mathematical activity through playful engagement, where materiality, movements and mind are entangled. This notion is further refined by setting in operation some theoretical tools from posthumanism, enculturation and mathematics as event. In particular, the adoption of posthumanism allows a shift from a child-centered perspective to a perspective that privileges the intricate connections between human and non-human materials. Materiality refers to matter as books, chairs, students, adults, movements, gestures, bodies and many other “things”. All materials are equally valued and can become performative agents in intra-actions with power to act. The way materials come to intra-act also relates to the material-discursive practice that is culturally formed in the context of the school-age Educare. Discourse and materialities shape each other and become the grounds on which different types of intra-actions can emerge.

The empirical basis of the study is field work in two school-age Educare centres. Observations in the practice captured in video recordings and memo-notes, notes from conversations between children and a teacher and two interviews with children were organized as data that provided a foundation for the analysis. To make sense of the data, a diffractive reading made it possible to bring together the theoretical tools, the empirical data, research in the area and the researcher’s own experience. Attention to situations that “glows” in mathematical events allowed the reading of the relationships where mathematics emerges.

As a result of the diffractive analysis the notion of mathemat-ing (in Swedish matematik-a) emerged. It refers to the emergence of events where designing, locating, counting, playing, measuring and explaining appear within the material-discursive practices of school-age Educare, as the result of the performative entanglement of materialities, human and non-human. This conceptualization directs attention to “being in” a mathematical event where creation and play provide opportunities of spending time in intra-actions. As a result, mathemat-ing moves the educational gaze away from a concern for the child’s development and performance. For the practice of school-age educare, this approach highlights the importance of how materialities are presented to facilitate the generation of different possible mathematical events. By affirming mathemat-ing, children can feel more comfortable with sensing other relationships about what the mathematical may mean.