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Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) relies on the pedagogy of guided reinvention, in which opportunities for learning are created through the teacher's orchestration of whole-class mathematical discussion towards a specific goal. However, introducing an RME approach to students who are accustomed to traditional teaching requires a substantial shift in roles, particularly with respect to the devolution of authority from teacher to student. In this study, we worked with low-attaining students, implementing RME to improve understanding of fractions. The analysis highlights how the introduction of guided reinvention is supported by extended wait time and teacher neutrality, but also by teachers' appropriation of student strategies as a basis for supporting shared authority in the joint construction of mathematical ideas. The article considers the relationship between guided reinvention, appropriation and student agency.

Two major concerns in mathematics teacher education are the role of subject matter knowledge and the development of self-efficacy in pre-service teachers. This article brings these issues together in an exploration of the interaction between pre-service teachers' perceptions of their subject matter knowledge and their accounts of university and placement experiences as potential sources of self-efficacy. Reporting on a group of ten pre-service teachers in Norway, we explore variations in the ways in which they perceived the role of subject knowledge in relation to experience, particularly "mastery experiences", over a period of nearly two years. We suggest that recognition of the role of "understanding why" in mathematics is crucial in the experience of mastery, and that there is a need to focus more on the role of subject matter knowledge in all sources of self-efficacy in teaching mathematics.

In this paper, we explore Norwegian teachers’ perspectives on inclusive teaching practices in the mathematics classroom, defined as practices which maximise every pupil’s potential regardless of prior attainment. As previous research suggests, both mathematics teachers’ perspectives in general and the conceptualisation of inclusion, inclusive education, and inclusive practices are culturally situated, varying significantly across countries and educational systems. We draw on data from a large project in Norway focusing on the use of grouping by attainment and its relation to policy and pedagogical practices around inclusion in mathematics. Participants were 13 primary and lower-secondary mathematics teachers from six schools in the Oslo area. Analysis of semi-structured interviews focusing on strategies for inclusion of all pupils in mathematics classrooms reveals the cultural particularities of mathematics teachers’ perspectives on inclusive practices, highlighting the value of similar investigations in other cultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grouping by attainment is a relatively new and contested practice in Norway, where strong historical discourses of heterogeneous education are under pressure from international test comparisons, particularly in mathematics. At the same time, research indicates that Norwegian teachers have a high degree of autonomy in education policy enactment. Analysing thirteen Norwegian mathematics teachers' reflections on grouping practices, we seek to understand their decision-making processes within this context. Our findings indicate that teachers report a high degree of autonomy in grouping practices which is exercised through considerable diversity in practice and defended when necessary. Using an ecological model of teacher agency reveals how teachers explore and explain their highly situated practice and its tensions and contradictions. We find that teachers who are removed from the central locus of autonomy have less to draw on in making and justifying their pedagogic choices, while those who are more central are able to continually reassess in this highly sensitive arena. We note the implications for practice and research on attainment grouping, particularly the need for teacher autonomy and support for professionally-based local decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the issue of gender and mathematics participation, focusing on the ways in which "clever girls" self-author within the discourse order of a high ability group, which has particular significance in the Norwegian context in which this study took place. Contrasting the cases of three girls, only one of whom (Anna) chooses to continue with a higher level of mathematics (mathematics for science), we consider the ways in which they manage being members of the "smart group". We analyse in particular the storying of Anna as a "nerd" and the social cost of being a "clever girl" against the backdrop of a public discourse of equality of opportunity in Norway.

An issue of particular concern in mathematics teacher education is the relationship between theory and practice, and the nature of university-school partnerships. We report here on results from a research project answering the call for a more systematic understanding of the practice learning context. The study focuses on the new Norwegian elementary teacher education programme and highlights the difficulties involved in connecting theory and practice and how prospective teachers may be supported in this respect. Focus group interviews involving 51 first-year prospective teachers and 25 teacher-mentors investigated early school placements, specifically prospective teachers' positions in the classroom as teachers of mathematics, and the ways in which the mentoring relationship supported their developing role. Taking a communities of practice perspective, we found that the idea of movement across intersecting and sometimes conflicting communities of practice is helpful in aiding our understanding of the difficulty of connecting theory and practice. Additionally, variations in mentoring styles and perceptions of prospective teachers' mathematics and pedagogic knowledge competencies play a part in some prospective teachers' difficulties in taking up a role as legitimate peripheral participant in the school. We conclude by considering ways in which prospective teachers might be better supported to cope with school placement.

A common theme in accounts of choosing mathematics is that of persistence in the face of troubles or difficulties which are often associated with the structuring effects of gender, class, culture and ethnicity. Centring on an analysis of one woman's account of becoming a mathematician, we build on our understanding of multiple and developing identities with the aim of capturing the nature of individual challenge to structuring discourses and its implications for choice and participation in mathematics more generally. Inspecting how she talks about events in the past, present, and future, we expand on Leont'ev's (1978, 1981) notion of leading activity to explore how we organise and prioritise activities (and their related identities) within the context of Holland et al.'s (1998) theory of identity in practice, hybridity and world-making. We interrogate the part played by contradiction in creating a space for individual agency through its resolution in hybrid practices and its relation to social change, exploring how our informant narrates taking up mathematics "against the odds" as part of an ongoing process of "re-writing" herself into new imagined worlds. In providing an insight into how one individual envisages and enacts a different mathematics culture in which she can have a place, our analysis suggests ways forward in creating new, more inclusive, mathematics education.

In this paper, we describe one secondary school's radical attempt to rethink the shape and purpose of education for its pupils, and its subsequent return to more traditional methods in the face of pressures of performativity and accountability. Framing our analysis within activity theory and its emphasis on contradiction as a driver for change, we describe the school's move towards a thematic curriculum and "personalised learning" as a process of productive tensions which enabled the development of new approaches to education. While these innovations were considered to be of major benefit to both teachers and pupils, a fundamental contradiction between the focus on individual development underpinning the new approach and the demands of accountability in a persistent culture of performativity proved to be insurmountable. We argue that this particular contradiction highlights the dominance of measurability in judgements of school success and individual progress, with consequences for the pupils' longer term education futures.

In this paper, we discuss the theoretical and methodological issues in exploring identity and agency within a narrative of choosing mathematics. Taking as our starting point Bakhtin's emphasis on the dialogic space between interlocutors, we explore how an awareness of the addressivity and otherness of utterances, and of the role of genre and heteroglossia in self-authoring, can be used in the analysis of an interview to gain insight into one student's narrative of choosing mathematics despite the fear that it held for her. We consider how our own research preoccupations with the role of gender and family discourses in learners' relationships with mathematics played a part in the interview, and how the interviewee's appropriation of, and resistance to, these and other genres can be understood as an assertion of agency within her particular narrative of choice.

This study responds to the debate on understanding and evaluating teacher learning in professional development programmes, with particular reference to the development of equitable mathematics classrooms. Conducted in the context of a year-long PD mathematics programme for primary teachers in Norway, designed to disrupt teachers' assumptions about mathematics pedagogy and how it relates to students' mathematical thinking, this study takes teachers' entry goals as its point of departure. Sixteen teachers participated in interviews at the end of the course. Recognising the situated nature of the development of pedagogic judgement in our analysis of teachers' reflections on their learning, we report on the shift in their "problems of practice" towards actionable concerns about student inclusion. We argue that this shift underpins a fundamental change in their assumptions about teaching and learning and a critical stance towards their own professional practice, suggesting an important indicator of what constitutes sustainable professional development for critical mathematics education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If mathematics is a male domain, where does this leave women who do mathematics? In a world where there is little or no discursive space in which to be female, women who enter in must do identity work in order to achieve what is often an uneasy presence. This paper builds on recent research which suggests that some undergraduate women are however finding new spaces for belonging in the world of mathematics through critical reflection and collective challenge to dominant discourses. Focussing on an analysis of two women's narratives of their success in mathematics, it explores their multi-voiced accounts of self through the lens of Bakhtin's dialogism. It discusses the scope of reflexivity in creating new identity spaces in refigured worlds.

The Portuguese curriculum has recently moved away from a focus on individual subject disciplines towards the development of cross-disciplinary competencies for civic life, including the development of statistical literacy in application to everyday problems. Students are encouraged to draw on their own interests to collect and organize data sets in support of intra- and inter-disciplinary problem solving, reasoning and communication. In this paper we investigate this conception of the development of statistical literacy and its relation to "real life" by exploring the talk of three pairs of working-class Portuguese students engaged in a task that was considered to be culturally relevant and realistic, and hence supportive of the development of civic competencies. We analyse what the nature of their talk indicates about the role of identities and dispositions in the way they approach statistics and their application in the real world. We suggest that differences between how each pair of students engages with the tasks illustrate the importance of individual experience and identity in accessing important statistical literacy.

Many learners may be successful in mathematics but nevertheless see themselves as existing only on the margins of the practice, or as lacking stability in it--in this sense, they have what can be called a fragile identity. Although this kind of relationship with mathematics is not limited to girls and women, they do appear to express such fragile identities more often or more readily. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from undergraduates in three English universities, this paper presents an analysis of the way in which university mathematics is differentially experienced by men and women, and of the part this may play in women's ongoing narratives of self as mathematicians. It is suggested that some women resist traditional positionings in the mathematics world, drawing on local resources which enable a sense of agency as successful students and a refiguring of their relationships with mathematics. (Contains 4 tables and 1 note.)

This article reports on data gathered from second and third year mathematics undergraduates at two British universities which have developed Mathematics Support Centres, primarily with a view to supporting skills development for engineering students. However, an unforeseen consequence of the support centres was the mathematics students' colonisation of the physical space, and the development of group learning strategies which involve a strong community identity. Drawing on a socio-cultural theoretical framework, based primarily in the concept of a figured world, the article explores the students' perceptions of mathematics learning and their experiences of university-level teaching, focusing on the ways in which they collectively build images of themselves as participants in an undergraduate mathematics community, resourced by the physical safe spaces that they have created, and which they now regard as essential sites of their learning.

Analysis of interviews with first-year undergraduate mathematics students shows that "not belonging" is a prevalent theme in their accounts of the experience of studying mathematics, even though their choice of degree-level study indicates a belief that they are at least at some level "good at maths". Instead, they tend to describe themselves as marginalised: they are aligned with mathematical procedures but do not contribute to them. A perception of oneself as a "legitimate peripheral participant"--as a novice with the potential to make constructive connections in mathematics--is rare. This article examines the potentially conflicting communities of practice within which undergraduate students find themselves, and presents a typology of their related learner identities. The analysis shows that undergraduate functionality in the sense of belief in oneself as a learner is not necessarily associated with the identity of novice/apprentice, as might be predicted by a community of practice model. On the contrary, students who describe identities of heavily alignment can appear unworried by their lack of participation in mathematics, successful as they are in the more dominant local communities of practice. It is argued that these, together with an institutional culture of entrenched beliefs about ability and ownership of knowledge, determine students' experiences and identities in ways which are noticeably gendered. The implications for teaching in mathematics and in higher education more generally are discussed. (Contains 1 table.)

Mathematics education reform emphasises the need to move away from transmission models of teaching to discursive classroom practices in which students negotiate and justify solutions to problems. This shift has potential, but not inevitable, implications for students' mathematical identities with respect to their sense of ownership and participation in mathematics as a creative activity, and is particularly pertinent in the UK context where ability grouping is prevalent. This paper presents an analysis of 13-15-year-old British pupils' accounts of learning and doing mathematics, and shows that the pedagogic practices of ability grouping do indeed play a major part in the development of participatory identities for some pupils but not for others. The data also show that learning is more than participation: it is also dependent on the discursive positions that individual pupils take up. The paper theorises further about the role of self-positioning in the development of individual mathematics identity trajectories.

The ability to handle proof is the focus of a number of well-documented complaints regarding students' difficulties in encountering degree-level mathematics. However, in addition to observing that proof is currently marginalised in the UK pre-university mathematics curriculum with a consequent skills deficit for the new undergraduate mathematics student, we need to look more closely at the nature of the gap between expert practice and the student experience in order to gain a full explanation. The paper presents a discussion of first-year undergraduate students' personal epistemologies of mathematics and mathematics learning with illustrative examples from 12 student interviews. Their perceptions of the mathematics community of practice and their own position in it with respect to its values, assumptions and norms support the view that undergraduate interactions with proof are more completely understood as a function of institutional practices which foreground particular epistemological frameworks while obscuring others. It is argued that enabling students to access the academic proof procedure in the transition from pre-university to undergraduate mathematics is a question of fostering an epistemic fluency which allows them to recognise and engage in the process of creating and validating mathematical knowledge.

Argues that the solution to underachievement in mathematics lies in explicit teaching of non-narrative genres and a recognition of a mathematical tradition that lies outside of individual authorship. (Author/JL)