Stockholms universitet

Lovisa SumpterProfessor

Om mig

Jag är professor i matematikämnets didaktik, men i grunden är jag gymnasielärare i matematik och samhällskunskap. Mina forskningsintressen spänner sig främst över tre områden: matematiska resonemang, affekt och genus. Gemensamt är individens möjlighet att delta i undervisning och lärande i matematik och utifrån en ekologisk utgångspunkt se vilka faktorer som möjligtvis hindrar eller underlättar deltagandet. Det huvudsakliga forskningsprojektet som jag är ansvarig för just nu heter på engelska Fair Share och handlar om matematik och fördelning av resurser med fokus på förskola och skola, ett projekt som är finansierat av Skolforskningsinstitutet. Jag sitter i Editorial Board för Educational Studies in Mathematics och International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education.

 

Undervisning

Min undervisning är främst på avancerad, master och forskningsnivå. Jag undervisar bland annat i kurser som är mer övergripande i matematik, men även metod.

Forskning

Min forskning fokuserar såväl på förskolan som på universitet inklusive doktorandstudier. Vad det gäller affekt och resonemang finner jag samspelet intressant: vilka grundantaganden har elever och lärare om matematik och matematikundervisning och hur påverkar dessa antaganden matematiska resonemang och undervisning om dessa? En annat intressant område är kvinnors deltagande i högre utbildning då det finns evidens för att matematik är en manlig domän och att det handlar mer om genusstrukturer och symbolism än om kvinnors bristande matematiska förmåga.

Forskningsprojekt

Publikationer

I urval från Stockholms universitets publikationsdatabas

  • Differences in grade 7 students’ understanding of the equal sign

    2022. Lovisa Sumpter, Anna Löwenhielm. Mathematical Thinking and Learning

    Artikel

    This paper studies grade 7 (age 13) students’ expressed understanding about the equal sign/notion of equivalence in order to investigate what aspects of the concept that could be seen as an established knowledge at lower secondary school/middle school. Using items from different instruments and combining these to a new one that covered a broad spectrum of procedural and conceptual knowledge, we collected data from 159 students. The different statistical tests showed that if focusing only on separate items, it could confirm that students could be seen either having operational or relational understanding of the equal sign. However, when taking all results into account using several analyses, students’ understanding appear to be much more complex. Instead of a dichotomized view, students’ expressed knowledge of mathematical equivalence should be seen as a continuum.

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  • Changes in affect: patterns in Grade 4 and Grade 8 students’ expressed emotional directions

    2023. Lovisa Sumpter, Samuel Sollerman. International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology

    Artikel

    This paper targets patterns of expressed emotional directions towards mathematics. By using TIMSS data and recoding two of the instruments, we compared responses from the same student cohort in Grade 4 (11 years old) and Grade 8 (15 years old) in Sweden. Two hypotheses were tested: negative emotions including negative motivations increase with age, and there will be gender differences. By using statistical analyses, including Cramer’s V, the two hypotheses were confirmed. The results also illuminated patterns within the responses, such that boys and girls in Grade 4 differ in expressed intrinsic motivation but not extrinsic motivation. There are also indications that girls might be more likely to form negative emotional directions between grades 4 and 8 than boys, and some implications of this is discussed. 

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  • Algebraic and fractional thinking in collective mathematical reasoning

    2021. Helena Eriksson, Lovisa Sumpter. Educational Studies in Mathematics

    Artikel

    This study examines the collective mathematical reasoning when students and teachers in grade 3, 4, and 5 explore fractions derived from length comparisons, in a task inspired by the El´konin and Davydov curriculum. The analysis showed that the mathematical reasoning was  mainly anchored in mathematical properties related to fractional or algebraic thinking. Further analysis showed that these arguments were characterised by interplay between fractional and algebraic thinking except in the conclusion stage. In the conclusion and the evaluative arguments, these two types of thinking appeared to be intertwined. Another result is the discovery of a new type of argument, identifying arguments, which deals with  the first step in task solving. Here, the different types of arguments, including the identifying arguments, were not initiated only by the teachers but also by the students, this in a multilingual classroom with a large proportion of students newly arrived. Compared to earlier research, this study offer a more detailed analysis of of algebraic and fractional thinking including possible patterns within the collective mathematical reasoning. An implication of this is that algebraic and fractional thinking appear to be more intertwined than previous suggested.

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