Images and Belief Research Papers

Please click on the links below to read the abstracts of the papers, alternatively you may wish to scroll through them.


Strassfeld, B. (2009). Becoming a triple geometry teacher: the case of Rose, in Swars, S. L., Stinson, D. W., & Lemons-Smith, S. (Eds.). Proceedings of the 31st annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. Atlanta, GA: Georgia State University. Vol 5, 920-927.

Picker, S. H. & Berry, J.S., (2008). Your students’ images of mathematicians and mathematics. In P. C. Elliott and C. M. Elliott Garnett, (Eds.), Getting into the mathematics conversation: valuing communication in mathematics classrooms (pp. 69-77). Reston, VA: NCTM.


Strassfeld, B. and Graham, E. (2006), High School Teachers’ Beliefs: The Use of Manipulatives, in Fraser-Abder, P. and Wallace, R. J. (eds), Pedagogical Issuers in Science, MATHEMATICS AND Technology Education, Volume 2, 6-23.
This paper shares some of the preliminary results of the research that is being conducted for the dissertation High School mathematics Teachers’ Beliefs about the Teaching and Learning of Geometry to be submitted to the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of Plymouth, UK. We will focus on high school teachers’ beliefs about the use of manipulatives in their geometry classes. We have found that in a sample of 520 questionnaires respondents there were statistically significant differences in manipulative use with respect to gender, membership of professional organisations, attendance at conferences, having a graduate degree, school location and undergraduate teacher preparation.

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Picker, S.H. (2005). Numb3rs: An Answer to Mathematics’ ‘Image Problem’? IOWME Newsletter, 19(3), 21-26.

Picker, S. H. & Berry, J. S. (2002). The human face of mathematics: challenging misconceptions. In D. Worsely, (Ed.), Teaching for depth: where math meets the humanities (pp. 50-60). New York: Heinemann.
A report of an intervention in to see if a group of students (n = 176) meeting with a diverse panel of mathematicians could change the invisibility of mathematicians for students and change negative images of mathematics and mathematician

Picker, S.H. & Berry, J. S. (2001). Investigating pupils’ images of mathematicians. In M. van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, (Ed.), Proceedings of the 25th conference of the international group for the psychology of mathematics education (PME), vol. 4 (pp. 49-56). Utrecht, Netherlands: Freudenthal Institute, Utrecht University.

Picker, S. H. & Berry, J. (2000). Investigating pupils’ images of mathematicians. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 43(1), 65-94.

This article presents the findings of an international research study (n = 476) in which pupils ages 12-13, in a variation of Margaret Meade’s "Draw a Scientist Test" were asked to "draw a mathematician at work". There were many disturbing images produced by the pupils from Finland, Sweden, Rmania, the US and UK, and yet the primary finding is that for these children, mathematicians and the work they do are invisible and media images have filled the void.

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