What is it about?
The Math Corps is a national mathematical community of practice centered in Detroit, Michigan. Based on extended interviews and analyzing how teachers and mentors in the program talk about students and their successes, this paper shows how language encodes a cultural model for achievement and intelligence that is shared and learned through participating in this cultural system.
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Why is it important?
There is a lot of research on concepts like 'growth mindset' and 'grit' that focuses on individuals. This paper uses a community where similar concepts, like 'greatness' are part of a culture that is acquired and shared by both teachers/mentors and students, and provides a method for other researchers to analyze the language of similar programs or communities.
Perspectives
This article is one of a set of papers that emerges from 10+ years of ethnographic research with this community. As a cognitive anthropologist, it is exciting for me to be able to present this research and this community to psychologists for the first time.
Stephen Chrisomalis
Wayne State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A linguistic analysis of a cultural model of mathematical achievement in an American community of practice., Qualitative Psychology, June 2023, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/qup0000258.
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