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A socio-political look at equity in the school organization of mathematics education

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Abstract

This paper presents some theoretical tools to help understand the meaning of mathematics education as socio-political practices and the implications of these for researching mathematics education. Taking two cases of schools and students in Denmark and South Africa, the paper illustrates how the theoretical and methodological ideas come into operation when illuminating issues of equity. It is contended that the disadvantaged positioning of some students for participating in mathematics teaching and learning is the result of the routines, ideas, shared meanings, and ways of talking and conceiving mathematics education among the actors in the school organization, inside as well as outside the classroom.

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Notes

  1. Ole Skovsmose’s paper here in this number provides a good overview on this issue.

  2. Such an approach shares many points in common with the recent work of Paul Cobb and collaborators (Cobb, McClain, Silva Lamberg, & Dean, 2003) on viewing mathematics teachers’ instructional practices as part of the school community of practice.

  3. More details on the methodology and analysis of data in the empirical studies can be found in Valero (2002b).

  4. The case of Gitte could be interpreted within the research on mathematics education for children with special needs. For a discussion of this trend see Magne (2001).

  5. These problems have been documented in under-resourced African communities in South Africa (e.g., Adler, 2001a; Vithal, 2003).

  6. The discussion of multilingualism and disadvantage in South African classroom has been broadly documented in the work of, for example, Adler (2001b) and Setati (2005).

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Acknowledgments

This paper makes part of the project “Mathematics Education and Democracy” which Ole Skovsmose and I are engaged with, at the Department of Education, Learning and Philosophy, Aalborg University.

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  1. Department of Education, Learning and Philosophy, Aalborg University, Fibigerstræde 10, 9220, Aalborg East, Denmark

    Paola Valero

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Correspondence to Paola Valero.

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Valero, P. A socio-political look at equity in the school organization of mathematics education. ZDM Mathematics Education 39, 225–233 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-007-0027-2

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