Book Review: Numeracy as social practice. Global and local perspectives. Keiko Yasukawa, Alan Rogers, Kara Jackson, & Brian V. Street (Eds.) (2018) Numeracy: the new kid on the block?:London & New York: Routledge. 260 pages. Paperback: ISBN 978-1-138-28445-6 (£34.99). Hardback: ISBN 978-1-138-28444-9 (£110.00). eBook: ISBN: 978-1-315-26947-4 . doi:10.4324/9781315269474 (£31.49)
This chapter adds to research where the interest is in the role of mathematics in workplace activities and vocational/professional education (see, for example, Bakker and FitzSimons 2014). Studies in this field have been performed in relation to vocations requiring relatively little post-school education (e.g., Keogh, Maguire and O’Donoghue 2016), as well as to professions requiring longer education (e.g., Frejd and Bergsten 2016). The vocation which is the focus of this chapter is construction work, and the specific interest is on mathematics as part of vocational students’ anticipated work. On the one hand we present an empirical project where teachers work in a collaborative teaching approach, together with students and a researcher, providing insights into how the significance of mathematical activities in construction work can be made more visible, recognised, and demarcated. On the other hand, our findings are part of theory development in that we present a model for how interfaces (see Damlamian and SträΒer 2009) between mathematics and construction work, as teaching content, can be understood.1 The pre-vocational study programmes (from here on called vocational education) in Sweden, where the study was performed, are part of the upper secondary school system. We view mathematics as a human activity, and include here all such activities throughout history which have come to be labelled as mathematics (FitzSimons 2002). As a consequence, we adopt a broad understanding of what constitutes mathematics.