Becoming more numerate: the journey of Tania

Abstract

This is the academic numeracy journey of Tania, who participated in a research study that investigated the academic numeracy skills of nursing students. Tania is a mature aged woman, and her story represents many of such mature aged students as they journey into a largely unknown university culture. The data for this research came from student assignments, surveys, interview transcripts, emails and screencasts. To see the development in Tania‘s numeracy, this paper utilises the micro- and macrogenetic models from Valsiner, and his approach to dialogic self, We see Tania in different I-positions in particular of becoming a university student, becoming a nursing student and becoming numerate i.e. as being able to use mathematics confidently and competently in a nursing context.