Learner: Identity

Purpose: To raise awareness of the particular needs of the learner.

References: 26, 36, 69, 74, 80

1. Following the UNESCO/ILO (2002) [69] report regarding the needs and aspirations of individuals in technical and vocational education and training, does the program:
1. encourage the harmonious development of personality and character, and foster spiritual and human values, the capacity for understanding, judgement, critical thinking and self-expression?
2. help to prepare the individual for lifelong learning by developing the mental tools, technical and entrepreneurial skills and attitudes?
3. develop capacities for decision-making and the qualities for active and intelligent participation, teamwork and leadership at work and in the community as a whole?
4. help to enable an individual to cope with the rapid advances in information and communication technology?

2. Do the activities have real meaning and purpose for each learner, involving the whole person (i.e. including cognitive, social, emotional development) and contributing to the formation of their individual identity?
1. Does the activity address and evaluate attitudes and beliefs regarding both learning and using mathematics?
2. How well does the learning activity address the emotional dimension of feelings and motivation?
3. Does the learning activity attempt to provoke a form of mental resistance [as distinct from defence which exists prior to the activity] which could engender independence, responsibility and creativity?
4. Does the activity encourage learners to seek to understand what might be emotional blocks to their learning?
5. How well does the learning activity address the social dimension of communication and co-operation?
6. Is the program engaging learners in productive activities that are personally as well as socially significant, and regarded as a means and not an end?
7. Is it recognised that the development of individuals is not limited to their appropriation of cultural tools and repertoires, but extends to the formation of a personality enabling them to make committed action choices?
8. Are activities regarded as situated in place and time and unique?

3. Does the pedagogy employed in the program have:
1. a focus on the power-knowledge connection which indicates that learners need to be included in the development of curriculum and instruction?
2. a focus on authority which highlights the need to address issues of voice and coming to voice (the politics of being heard and being listened to)?
3. a focus on difference and exclusion which registers the need to redress under-representation of certain groups (in this case, in mathematics education for women, minority groups, marginalised groups, etc.)?
4. engaged educators who acknowledge a connection between intellectual ideas acquired through formal learning and the ideas gained from personal experiences in the homeplace and other informal learning sites?

4. More theoretically:
1. How does the activity mediate between mathematical and other ‘knowledge’ as a construct of society and ‘knowing’ as a construct of an individual?
2. How well does the learning activity address the external interaction process between the learner and his or her social, cultural and material environment?
3. How well does the learning activity address the internal psychological process of acquisition and elaboration in which new impulses are connected with the results of prior learning?
4. Does the learning activity acknowledge that acquiring knowledge and skills always implies identity building?
5. Are outcomes regarded as both the goal to be aimed for and emergent — depending on the route taken, the problems encountered, and the human and material resources available?
6. Are the activities organised in ways that enable learners to draw on multiple sources of assistance in achieving their goals and in mastering the means needed in the process?