Mayu Aoki new PhD student at DSE from March 1

Mayu Aoki's PhD project is about arithmetic teaching in supplementary educational institutions for Japanese children abroad.

Globalization has caused expat communities to grow, and populous nations like Japan, France and the US support “overseas schools” for children living abroad for a limited period. Mathematics education in such establishments is not widely investigated. Children attend regular schools on weekdays (following a non-Japanese curriculum) and then come to supplementary schools on Saturday. At a general level, research has identified various problematic issues due to the increasing diversity of children’s backgrounds. However, little/no research has focused on didactic (content-related) aspects of those difficulties, like how the students cope with following two different curricula of mathematics. Arithmetic was chosen to focus the study on a crucial domain, present throughout primary school and structured differently in different school systems. The theoretical framework for this project is based on the anthropological theory of the didactic (ATD), particularly the notion of praxeology. The project conducts a praxeological analysis of arithmetic curricula in Japan, Denmark and Sweden, and based on the resulting reference model, Mayu will analyse classroom observations and interviews with teachers and pupils of the Japanese supplementary schools in Denmark and Sweden.

Mayo Aoki will join the research group Didactics of Mathematics.