New Directions for Situated Cognition in Mathematics Education

Anne Watson is Reader in Mathematics Education at the University of Oxford. Before that she taught for many years in maintained secondary schools which served socially diverse areas. She now works in teacher education, and her work with students, and in local schools, and her research is characterised by a concern for social justice through education. In particular, the nature of mathematics classrooms and adolescents’ relationships within them are a central concern. She has published numerous books, articles and papers for both professional and academic audiences and is often asked to talk to national and international audiences of researchers and practitioners.

Peter Winbourne currently lectures in mathematics education at the London South Bank University. After a long career teaching mathematics in inner city multicultural maintained schools, his passion for mathematics and social equity took him into teacher education, preparing people to work in similar schools. His interests developed from specific focus on the uses of new technologies to support learning to answering difficult questions such as why people should bother to learn at all. In answering these questions he has developed his understanding and ideas of theories of situated cognition, seeing these as illuminating the experiences of individuals as they become the people they are going to be.