Entrepreneur as a hero of Russian cinema in the first half of the 1990s: the adoption of a new stereotype

The essay discusses, via the analysis the Soviet and Russian cinema of the first half of the 1990s, the problem of adoption of a new socio-ethical stereotype the positive moral stereotype of an entrepreneur, a businessman and a private property owner in post-perestroika Russia. The scholarly novelty of the presented study consists Pointing out that films of that period have been mostly evaluated in a fragmented and ambiguous manner, the author analyzes them in the context of the formation of mass representations (stereotypes and frames) of one of the periods most characteristic social figures. The actuality of the study analysis is evidenced by the ongoing discussions about the ethical background of entrepreneurship in contemporary Russia and about the nature of the 1990s. Considering this problem on the basis of a comprehensive analysis of representative films (Genius, Confessions of a Kept Woman, Limita, Ryaba My Chicken, Love the Russian Way, and others), the author concludes in 19901995 Soviet/Russian cinema, inspired both by the inertia of the former Soviet ideas about business and businessmen and the dramatic collisions of the first five years of the post-Soviet era, did not provide the viewer with sufficient artistic arguments for the ethical rehabilitation of entrepreneurship and, therefore, failed to fix new stereotypes and instructional representations/frames in the mass consciousness.

A Constructivist Alternative to the Representational View of Mind in Mathematics Education

The representational view of mind in mathematics education is evidenced by theories that characterize learning as a process in which students modify their internal mental representations to construct mathematical relationships or structures that mirror those embodied in external instructional representations. It is argued that, psychologically, this view falls prey to the learning paradox, that, anthropologically, it fails to consider the social and cultural nature of mathematical activity and that, pedagogically, it leads to recommendations that are at odds with the espoused goal of encouraging learning with understanding. These difficulties are seen to arise from the dualism created between mathematics in students' heads and mathematics in their environment. An alternative view is then outlined and illustrated that attempts to transcend this dualism by treating mathematics as both an individual, constructive activity and as a communal, social practice. It is suggested that such an approach might make it possible to explain how students construct mathematical meanings and practices that, historically, took several thousand years to evolve without attributing to students the ability to peek around their internal representations and glimpse a mathematically prestructured environment. In addition, it is argued that this approach might offer a way to go beyond the traditional tripartite scheme of the teacher, the student, and mathematics that has traditionally guided reform efforts in mathematics education.