Keynote Paper abstracts

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DIALOGICAL ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN THEORY AND OBSERVATIONS WITH REFERENCE TO WEAKLY CLASSIFIED ACTIVITIES
Godfrey Sethole
Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa

This paper provides a theoretical tour I took in a quest to develop a language of description for mathematical tasks which incorporated the everyday. The substance of the argument is that I continuously had to abandon or modify my initial theoretical constructs as dialogue between data and theory ensued. I illustrated this point by retracing how the construct, weak classification, became limited in providing a more accurate description of the type of activities initially categorized as weakly classified. Summoning Dowling’s language of description for texts for this purpose, I also illustrate how I had to modify it in order to provide a better explanation of my study’s purpose. I argue that the ‘lens’ metaphor for theory may be misleading.
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Insights into the implementation of Mathematical Literacy
Hamsa Venkat & Mellony Graven
Marang Centre, Wits University 

In this paper, which accompanies our keynote lecture, we present some insights from our research into the implementation of Mathematical Literacy. Two key areas are discussed – learners’ experiences and pedagogic practice. We note that in our main research school, learners’ responses to Mathematical Literacy have been very positive, and are attributed to changes in the nature of tasks used in lessons and the nature of classroom interaction. The notion of changing pedagogic practices leads into our development of a spectrum of agendas guiding educators’ interpretations of Mathematical Literacy. We conclude by summarising the successes and detailing the issues emerging within implementation in our research – key amongst these, ways of thinking about progression in Mathematical Literacy and summative assessment
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Border Patterns, Tessellations & Problem Solving with Transformations
Michael de Villiers
University of KwaZulu-Natal
(On sabbatical Kennesaw State University, USA)

This paper will firstly explore some of the symmetries and transformations involved in border patterns and tessellations. This will be followed by some examples of problem solving with transformations. Lastly, we’ll explore some transformations of graphs of functions of the form y = f(x).

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