REPRESENTATION AS A COGNITIVE AND SOCIAL PRACTICE

Representation has been increasingly viewed as central to mathematical activity. Yet, it is becoming obvious that students are having difficulty negotiating the various forms and functions of representations. The purpose of this paper is to draw on the literature to synthesize these various components in one scheme, and briefly discuss some implications for the teaching of representation. In the next four sections, I first present a brief background on representation, and then I use the two distinct lenses of individual cognition and social activity for looking at representation in mathematics. The two imply different roles for representation, but I find them to be complimentary as is explicated below. I conclude with some pedagogical suggestions as a result of this classification.