Abstract
This prospective study adopted Vygotsky’s concept of perezhivanie to examine students’ lived experiences in learning mathematics and how they were related to subject choice plans and actual decisions. Most research has considered students’ mathematics subject choice as a decision predictable using important cognitive and social variables. Due attention has not been given to examining how students’ lived experiences in learning mathematics relate and contribute to their subject choice plans and decisions over time. Perezhivanie is a psychological structure for understanding dynamic influences derived from personal and contextual sources. In this study, two case studies were crafted using multiple data sources including interviews, observations, surveys and fieldnotes collected over three years on two achieving students who had studied in the same class. Despite this shared context, their perezhivanija differed, revealing complex dynamic interplay between factors derived from personal and external realms. This study described the identified perezhivanija of these two students and explained how they were related to their subject choice plans and their eventual subject choice decisions. The findings revealed that perezhivanija, including both heightened experiences and meta-experiences, were vital personal sources informing subject choice plans and decisions.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Black, L., Williams, J., Hernandez-Martinez, P., Davis, P., Pampaka, M., & Wake, G. (2010). Developing a ‘leading identity’: the relationship between students’ mathematical identities and their career and higher education aspirations. Educational Studies in Mathematics. 73(1), 55–72.
Blunden, A. (2016). Translating perezhivanie into English. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 23(4), 274–283.
Chen, F. (2015). Parents’ perezhivanie supports children's development of emotion regulation: a holistic view. Early Child Development and Care, 185(6), 851-867.
Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2016). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Sage.
Dilnot, C. (2016). How does the choice of A-level subjects vary with students' socio-economic status in English state schools? British Educational Research Journal, 42(6), 1081–1106.
Ferholt, B. (2015). Perezhivanie in researching playworlds: Applying the concept of perezhivanie in the study of play. In S. Davis, B. Ferholt, H. G. Clemson, S.-M. Jansson, & A. Marjanovic-Shane (Eds.), Dramatic interactions in education: Vygotskian and sociocultural approaches to drama, education and research (pp. 57–75). Bloomsbury Academic.
González Rey, F. (2011). A re-examination of defining moments in Vygotsky’s work and their implications for his continuing legacy. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 18(3), 257–275. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749030903338517
Guo, J., Marsh, H. W., Parker, P. D., Morin, A. J. S., & Seeshing Yeung, A. (2015). Expectancy-value in mathematics, gender and socioeconomic background as predictors of achievement and aspirations: A multi-cohort study. Learning and Individual Differences, 37, 161–168.
Harackiewicz, J. M., Rozek, C. S., Hulleman, C. S., & Hyde, J. S. (2012). Helping parents to motivate adolescents in mathematics and science: An experimental test of a utility-value intervention. Psychological Science, 23, 899–906.
Kirkham, J., Chapman, E., & Wildy, H. (2019). Factors considered by Western Australian Year 10 students in choosing Year 11 mathematics courses. Mathematics Education Research Journal, 1–23.
Lemke, J. L. (2000). Across the scales of time: Artifacts, activities, and meanings in ecosocial systems. Mind, culture, and activity, 7(4), 273–290.
Mujtaba, M., Reiss, M. J., & Hodgson, A. (2014). Motivating and supporting young people to study mathematics: A London perspective. London Review of Education, 12, 121–142.
Ng, C. (2020). Disadvantaged students’ motivation, aspiration and subject choice in mathematics: A prospective qualitative investigation. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 18(5), 945–964.
Ng, C., & Renshaw, P. (2019). An Indigenous Australian student’s perezhivanie in reading and the evolvement of reader identities over three years. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 22, 100310.
Noyes, A., & Adkins, M. (2016). Studying advanced mathematics in England: Findings from a survey of student choices and attitudes. Research in Mathematics Education, 18, 231–248.
Reiss, M., Hoyles, C., Mujtaba, T., Riazai-Farzad, B., Rodd, M., Simon, S., & Stylianidou, F. (2011). Understanding participation rates in post-16 mathematics and physics. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 9(2), 273–302.
Reiss, M. J., & Mujtaba, T. (2017). Should we embed careers education in STEM lessons? The Curriculum Journal, 28(1), 137–150.
Renshaw, P., & Tooth, R. (2016). Perezhivanie mediated through narrative place-responsive pedagogy. In A. Surian (Ed.), Open spaces for interactions and learning diversities (pp. 13–23). Sense Publishers.
Roth, W.-M. (2007). Emotion at work: A contribution to third-generation cultural-historical activity theory. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 14(1-2), 40–63.
Roth, W.-M. (2017). The mathematics of mathematics: Thinking with the late Spinozist Vygotsky. Sense Publishers.
Roth, W.-M., & Jornet, A. (2016). Perezhivanie in the light of the later Vygotsky’s Spinozist turn. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 23(4), 315–324.
Roth, W.-M., & Jornet, A. (2017). Understanding educational psychology. Springer.
Roth, W.-M., & Walshaw, M. (2019). Affect and emotions in mathematics education: Toward a holistic psychology of mathematics education. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 102(1), 111–125.
Sheldrake, R., Mujtaba, T., & Reiss, M. J. (2015). Students’ intentions to study non-compulsory mathematics: The importance of how good you think you are. British Educational Research Journal, 41(3), 462–488.
Smagorinsky, P. (2011). Vygotsky’s stage theory: The psychology of art and the actor under the direction of perezhivanie. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 18(4), 319–341.
Veresov, N., & Fleer, M. (2016). Perezhivanie as a theoretical concept for researching young children’s development. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 23(4), 325–335.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1971). The psychology of art. M.I.T. Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1989). Concrete human Psychology. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 27, 53–77. https://doi.org/10.2753/RPO1061-0405270253
Vygotsky, L. S. (1993). The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky: Vol. 2 the fundamentals of defectology. Springer.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1994). The problem of the environment. In R. V. D. Veer & J. Valsiner (Eds.), The Vygotsky reader (pp. 338–354). Penlum Press.
Watt, H. M., Hyde, J. S., Petersen, J., Morris, Z. A., Rozek, C. S., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (2017). Mathematics—A critical filter for STEM-related career choices? A longitudinal examination among Australian and US adolescents. Sex Roles, 77(3-4), 254–271.
Wilkie, K. J., & Sullivan, P. (2018). Exploring intrinsic and extrinsic motivational aspects of middle school students’ aspirations for their mathematics learning. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 97(3), 235–254.
Funding
The completion of this paper was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP140101431).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
ESM 1
(DOCX 23 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ng, C. Subject choice and perezhivanie in mathematics: a longitudinal case study. Educ Stud Math 107, 547–563 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-021-10050-3
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-021-10050-3