Narrative analysis

Narratives were constructed from students’ responses on the questionnaires, focus groups and interviews to explore how their identities mediated the interpretation of the received messages, and what was eventually their posi- tioning in the new setting. For this purpose I used Bruner’s (1996) theory on narratives. In Appendix D the reader can find a full transcript of the interview with one of the participants, Jason. In this section I explain how I constructed the narrative (the recognition and realisation rules that I used) and I present utterances from the student that suggest his mathematical identity.

According to Bruner (1996) individuals develop a version of themselves in the world through their own narratives, and it is through narratives that a culture supplies its members with models of identity and agency. Each

narrative consists of a sequence of events and through this sequence the meaning that the narrator wants to recount is carried. Narrative itself is a discourse and behind every discourse there is a reason for being uttered. Bruner (1996) cites nine features that narratives have in the forming of cul- tural “reality”: time structure, generic particularity, reasons, hermeneutic composition, canonicity, ambiguity, troubles, negotiability and, historical ex- tensibility. Three of these elements (time structure, reasons, and troubles) are of particular importance in this study and I will explain below why.

The narrative divides time into segments by unraveling critical events. In this study with the narration of their stories students unfold the moments that they received important messages from their lecturers (either implicitly or explicitly) regarding their settling into the new context. In this way it is possible to isolate the events and explore them separately in order to identify what lies beneath them that makes students consider them as important.

The things that individuals describe in their narratives are never acci- dental; they are triggered by their beliefs, their values, their desires, etc. Therefore, narratives explore reasons and not causes. In the narration of their stories, the participants of this study recount the reasons that partic- ular instances in the teaching-learning interactions challenged their thinking about the learning of mathematics. This challenge contributed to the reshap- ing of their identities as mathematics learners which resulted in a specific positioning in the context of university.

Stories that people choose to narrate are usually created through troubles. Similarly, when students choose to talk about incidents that happened during their adjustment to university, often they refer to times that they struggled to get familiar with the new practices and the new ways of approaching mathematics. This brings to the fore such kinds of events and facilitates the

recognition of students’ difficulties and the exploration of possible ways to alleviate them.

With the use of narratives I try to give an insight into students’ trajec- tories from school to university and to the impact of the received messages on this process. This methodology, provides an understanding of how past experiences with mathematics can be influential during the current teaching- learning interactions in the university context and, whether there are any possible changes in the near future that may contribute to a smoother in- tegration. With the analysis of students’ narratives I focus on the kinds of messages that they receive from their lecturers, the interpretation they make out of them and the impact that these have on the transitional experience. In this way I can see clearly how their identities as mathematics learners are (re)shaped through the teaching-learning interactions and how this attributes them certain positions in the university context.

I constructed the narratives based on the model past-present-future that the methodology provides. Initially the first questionnaire was designed in order to gather information regarding students’ background. Namely their previous relations with mathematics, their study habits at school, their prin- cipal motives for choosing to study for a degree in mathematics and the expectations that they envisaged from the degree. This information was strengthened from the focus groups and interview data where I asked the students to provide me with more details about their background stories. In this way, I gathered all the required material to build each student’s back- ground profile. It was also an opportunity to identify elements of students’ identities as mathematics learners.

For the next phase - the present - I focused my attention mostly on the focus groups and interview data and less on the first questionnaire. In

this case I identified the messages that each individual student talked about during our discussions, and the interpretations they made out of them. By decomposing each message to determine the degree of its power and control I explored in what ways students’ identities were impacted in this interaction and to what extent. Then I explored what changes they were willing to implement (or not) in their learning - the future - in order to integrate better into the new context, and according to these how they positioned themselves. Finally, the ways they pictured their future selves as mathematics learners were enriched from the data collected from the second questionnaire (this applies only to the six students who returned it). In this questionnaire the students had the chance to mention what they would change in their learning habits during the second semester of their studies as a result of a message transmitted by their lecturers.