A gender perspective on adults’ motivation (and resistance) to learn mathematics.

Abstract

In the English research project “Making numeracy teaching meaningful to adult learners”, a central research question was about students’ motivations for learning mathematics. From this project, we have access to rich empirical data from semi-structured interviews with the students (2/3 female and 1/3 male). One of the key findings was that students’ motivations are varied and complex but few come to study maths because they feel a lack of skills in their everyday lives. In this paper, the author revisits these data in order to bring gender perspectives into the students’ motivation and resistance to study mathematics. Four analytical gender perspectives (structural, symbolic, personal, and interactional) are presented and used in the analysis, which is based on an understanding of adults’ motivation and resistance to learn as two interrelated phenomena.