Mid Sweden University

This ongoing study focuses on the meeting between child and textbook. Mathematics textbooks are a common teaching resource. Over 75 percent of primary school children, worldwide, are taught mathematics from textbooks, and in Sweden more than 90 percent use textbooks in their mathematics education (Mullis, Martin, Foy & Arora, 2012). In order to analyse the textbook as a resource for meaning making and children’s meaning making, the concepts of theoretical semiotic potential and actual semiotic potential (van Leuween, 2005) will be used. The former concept is understood as the meaning the mathematics textbook has been designed to offer, and the dichotomous concept, actual semiotic potential, as the meaning the individual discovers in her encounter with the textbook. A delimitation to Swedish primary school year 1 (children 7-8 years) will be done, and both digital and printed textbooks will be included. The data consists of video material, and documents in the form of children’s representations. The video material is comprised of 18 children working with printed textbooks, and approximately the same amount working with digital textbooks. A multimodal analysis will be done. This study aims to explore the relationship between the designed and the discovered. The expected outcome of the study is that the mathematical content the textbook was designed to offer is not always what the children in fact discover. This is of great concern for teachers as well as textbooks authors and illustrators. Knowledge of how the relationship between theoretical semiotic potential and actual semiotic potential appears is of interest, and can in the long run support teachers’ planning and implementation of their mathematics teaching.

References Mullis, I. V., Martin, M. O., Foy, P., & Arora, A. (2012). TIMSS 2011 international results in mathematics. International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Herengracht 487, Amsterdam, 1017 BT, The Netherlands. van Leeuwen, T. (2005). Introducing social semiotics. London: Routledge.