1 Education reform in mathematics

Many studies have sought to operationalize the meaning of education reform and how it has unfolded in history over time and across contextual settings (Gravemeijer et al., 2016; Ross et al., 2003; Shirrell et al., 2019; Spillane & Thompson, 1997). Spillane and Thompson (1997) distinguished between ‘naïve notions’ and ‘sophisticated notions’ of education reform, claiming that these could be viewed as two operational types of education reform that are situated on either end of the spectrum.

On the one end, naïve notions of education reform constitute the transmission of behavioral change in educational practice through horizontal channels of policy makers. Practitioners are prompted through a system of incentives and sanctions to accomplish the change enforced on them horizontally (Cohen & Barnes, 1993; Spillane & Thompson, 1997). On the other end, sophisticated notions of education reform constitute settings where diverse actors across different levels of the system are involved in re-shaping the educational experience as suitable to their local context (Gravemeijer et al., 2016; Shirrell et al., 2019; Spillane & Thompson, 1997). In this paper, we focus on the recent Egyptian education reform in K-12 mathematics, which – as will be outlined below – aligns more with Spillane and Thompson (1997) naïve notion of education reform.

Education reform in mathematics has also been reported to be targeting complex behavioral change which is only possible through a full re-conceptualization of knowledge, beliefs and dispositions in relation to mathematics education (Drake & Sherin, 2006; Shirrell et al., 2019). For this complex shift to happen, teachers need to be able to re-conceptualize their beliefs about the nature of mathematics (Shirrell et al., 2019) and adapt the revised curriculum in a way that aligns with its underpinning ethos (Drake & Sherin, 2006). The diffusion of such a complex change is only possible if a holistic infrastructure is in place (Shirrell et al., 2019).

1.1 Diffusion of education reform in mathematics

In their study of diffusers to education reform in mathematics education, Spillane and Thompson (1997) operationalized three forms of capital: physical capital, human capital and social capital. Beginning with physical capital, this refers to the infrastructural setting of a school, classroom spaces, time allocated to leaders to negotiate the reform with teachers and equipment available at the school. Human capital refers to the level of preparation of teachers to embrace a reform in mathematics education. In this regard, Shirrell et al. (2019) distinguished between formal channels and informal channels of teacher professional development. Teachers can seek to question their own perceptions about mathematics education and receive support in changing their behaviors in the classroom as educators, in alignment with the requirements of the reformed curriculum either through formal training or through informal support groups. The latter is the target of the exploration of this paper.

Finally, social capital can be seen as having an inward facing meaning and outward facing meaning (Resnick, 1988; Robison et al., 2002). The former refers to the socialization of a re-consideration to the meaning and practice of mathematics education through local channels of teacher communities of practice. In other words, mathematics teachers from the same school would meet to discuss the ways in which they relate to the meaning of mathematics as re-constructed through the education reform setting (Drake & Sherin, 2006). The latter refers to networks formed with other educational associations in the school district that would foster the diffusion of a reformed mathematics curriculum. In this paper, we aim to shed some light on the inward facing dimension of a school’s social capital as a form of diffusion of education reform in mathematics education in Egypt.

2 Mathematics education reform in the Egyptian context

In their investigation of challenges surrounding the mathematics curriculum in particular, the Egyptian government (Ministry of Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform in Egypt, 2018; Shaaban, 2020; UNESCO, 2014) commissioned a research team to explore the status of the K-12 educational landscape. The research team included governmental, international, research and local NGO agents (MOE, 2014; Marey & Magd, 2022), whose work identified that the culture of procedural and memorization-based instruction and assessment in mathematics had been normalized for too long. The aforementioned national study revealed that the reason for this normalization was partially connected to the lack of professional development of teachers, resulting in their limited capacity to teach or assess in other ways.

As a result, several national and international partnerships have been established, with the intention of re-envisioning the mathematics curriculum and laying out a roadmap for teacher professional development to align with the revised curriculum (Marey & Magd, 2022). The reformed curriculum is formally referred to as the EDU2.0 Curriculum (Egypt’s Vision, 2030, 2016). The intention was that the EDU2.0 reform would capture the whole structure of K-12 mathematics education, targeting different stakeholders. This would be achieved through concentrating on the following four main pillars (Egypt’s Vision, 2030, 2016; Marey & Magd, 2022): (1) enhancing teacher professional and technical skills, (2) reforming the curriculum, (3) transforming instruction and (4) restructuring the assessment. The intention was that the written mathematics curriculum would be restructured to ensure that the content is up to date, relevant, embedding life skills and values, keeping pace with challenges of the twenty-first century, focusing on local and global issues, and deeply rooted in the Egyptian culture. The implemented and taught curriculum shifts to more learner centred approaches, focusing on teaching students how to think critically, negotiate and problem solve. (Marey & Magd, 2022, p. 209)

While teacher professional development has been factored into the four pillars of reforming the mathematics curriculum, mathematics teacher readiness to embrace change and awareness of its relevance did not seem to be as adequately captured (Makramalla & Stylianides, 2021). This study took place at the very onset of the EDU2.0 curricular implementation and aimed to explore how mathematics teacher professional bodies related to the ethos underpinning the EDU2.0 mathematics curriculum and hence their readiness to embrace it. The aim of this study is to explore the degree of influence different agents within the educational systems have in diffusing a culturally foreign reformed pedagogy in mathematics education.

2.1 Mathematics teacher professional development in the education reform context

One of the pillars adopted to diffuse the reformed strategy in Egypt was through the professional development of mathematics teachers (Egypt’s Vision, 2030, 2018). Despite the efforts invested in standardizing mathematics teacher professional development, Zaalouk (2013) attested that professional development programs “did not fit the local culture of standards and were not internalised by educators at the school level” (p. 212). Zaalouk (2013) also expressed a concern about the effectiveness of teacher professional development programs, beyond them acting as gatekeepers to guaranteeing promotion and licensing.

As a subset of the formal channels of teacher professional development initiated by the government, we choose to consider teacher networks from the perspective of our previously established understanding of a school’s internally facing social capital (Robison et al., 2002). As discussed, social networks created within the school can act as strong diffusers to the ethos of an education reform in mathematics education, operating from within the school itself.

3 Diffusing Egypt’s mathematics curricular reform: two layers of investigation

We distinguish between two layers of curricular reform diffusion; namely, the macro-culture layer and the micro-culture layer.

3.1 The macro-culture perspective: The role and meaning of a collective culture

As will be presented in the theoretical framework section, trends in the wider macro-culture, represented by societal trends that mark a national culture more generally, impact the construction and socialization of local norms and practices within smaller micro-cultures (Goodson, 2000). Hofstede (1980) operationalized the, so called, IC continuum by claiming that, at a national level, societies are considered as operating on a scale that extends between individualism (I) and collectivism (C). In his attempts to capture the features that would denote individualistic and collective cultures, a model that comprises 14 constructs was created and validated (Hofstede, 1980, 2001). Brewer and Venaik (2010) argued that these notions would consider cultural and societal trends from a national perspective and hence would not distinguish between individual variations. While individual variations exist within micro-communities (as will be highlighted in the next section), it is important to also draw on a larger national cultural perspective denoted here as the macro-culture. For the purposes of this paper, we use the description of individualistic and collective cultures that have been framed by Hofstede (2001) as follows:

Individualism stands for a society in which the ties between individuals are loose: Everyone is expected to look after her/his immediate family only. Collectivism stands for a society in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, which throughout people’s lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for unquestionable loyalty. (Hofstede, 2001, p. 225)

As evident from this definition, protection in collective cultures is directly related to loyalty. This includes a group’s loyalty to agreed upon beliefs and practices of teaching and perceiving mathematics in a certain way. Failing to adopt the culturally agreed upon practices could hence be perceived as a lack of loyalty to the groups’ beliefs and could hence have implications for the social protection exercised by the group. In other words, an individual who diverts from the mainstream culturally familiar pedagogic perception could be socially marginalized from the collective group. This notion of group loyalty itself could arguably be seen as challenging the notion of critical friendship within a group. This is because loyalty in collective cultures is directly related to submissiveness (Sims & Penny, 2015). In light of the complex relationship of criticality versus loyalty, our aim is to explore the role of teacher professional networks as diffusers of change in settings of education reform in collective cultures, such as in Egypt.

3.2 The micro-culture perspective: Implications for practice

House et al. (2004) also sought in their GLOBE study to operationalize notions of individualistic and collective cultures from an internalized socialization perspective, a perspective that we refer to as the micro-culture. As part of this study, we created a model (Fig. 1) that adopts the constructs of the GLOBE study in order to differentiate between a number of micro-culture specific features.

Fig. 1
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Dimensions of the GLOBE Model

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While the model captures the analysis of different micro-cultural settings, in this paper, we focus on the study of practices in institutional collectivism. The institutional culture that we aim to study is the micro-culture of a school as an institution. We choose to focus on the practice dimension (Fig. 1, bottom right corner), since this study is focused on networks of professional teacher practice. As we are considering the socialization of teachers in mathematics teacher communities, it is vital that we study the professional networks of teachers with an understanding of the power dynamics that govern the practice. The following four constructs, according to GLOBE (House et al., 2004), can be used to represent a given microculture on the IC spectrum:

  1. (a)

    leaders encouraging group loyalty on account of marginalizing of individuals;

  2. (b)

    the society aiming to maximize individualistic interests versus collective interests;

  3. (c)

    individuals in the group find it important to be accepted by other members; and

  4. (d)

    the cohesion of the group is valued more (or less) than individuality.

The classification of House et al. (2004) again refers to group loyalty and the marginalization of individuals that would not align themselves with the group’s dogma. In the case of mathematics teachers faced with a culturally foreign reformed curriculum, this could imply that individuals that choose to align themselves with a pedagogy that is culturally foreign to the mainstream could suffer marginalization from the mainstream (as evident in point a). As a result, individuality of teacher pedagogy would be socially discouraged (as evident in point d) on the account of wanting to belong to the group (as evident in point c).

3.3 The macro–micro culture dynamic in the Egyptian context

As we review the literature on how the teaching and learning of mathematics is socialized in the Egyptian context, we consider the notion of individualism and collectivism that we have operationalized above, both at a macro-level (Hofstede, 1980) and at a micro-level (House et al., 2004). The teaching and learning culture in Egypt is, by and large, one where individual agents (be it teachers, administrators or leaders) derive their strength from their sense of communal belonging to the larger group. Indeed, mathematics teachers are less likely to adopt a teaching methodology that differs from the mainstream good practice (Makramalla & Stylianides, 2021); standing out as ‘different’ might lead to alienation from the larger group, which teachers tend to avoid. Considering Hofstede’s (1980) operationalization of macro-cultures on the IC spectrum, it could be claimed that the wider Egyptian macro-culture is more closely situated on the collective end of the IC spectrum and, thus, it is suitable for researchers to consider questions of socializing education reform in mathematics in Egypt by exploring teacher groups rather than individual teachers.

A teaching methodology where the emphasis is on differentiated instruction in the interest of involving each individual learner is reportedly alien to the local culture of teaching and learning mathematics (Elmenoufy, 2007). As a micro-culture, teachers are inclined to run the classroom in a manner that engages the majority, with little emphasis on individuals who may feel challenged. Hence, on the first metric of the GLOBE study, the micro-culture would be classified as collective. Additionally, a process where knowledge is constructed gradually in the classroom and where learners work collaboratively has been identified as foreign to the teachers who mostly derived their sense of value from their superior mathematical knowledge relative to that of their students (Makramalla & Stylianides, 2019). School-level mathematics was considered, to a large degree, to be a static body of knowledge that is transferred to students using procedural or memorization-based practices (Marey & Magd, 2022). Considering these factors in light of the GLOBE study, it becomes evident that we can confidently classify the micro-culture further on the collective (House et al., 2004).

4 The role mathematics teacher communities in socializing educational reform

By situating the notion of reform in mathematics education into a larger social community, where members can engage and discuss together what works in their local setting, both mathematics teachers and learners can uncover what mathematics means to them in a contextually sensitive manner (Dudley, 2014). Teacher communities of practice can hence be viewed as living organisms that foster the socialization of learning in mathematics education (Cobb et al., 2003). Numerous studies have sought to investigate the role of teacher communities and networks in terms of influencing teachers’ sense of academic and personal support and readiness for instruction in the particular context where the network is situated (Marcia & Garcia, 2016; Niez & Kappan, 2007; Trust, 2012).

According to Niez and Kappan (2007), teacher communities and networks often present themselves as a support system to promote positive mental health practices. Additionally, teacher communities and networks often act as circles of like-minded people, where contextualized pedagogical know how could be exchanged and practiced (Marcia and Garcia, 2016). Much of the relevant literature has presented teacher communities and networks to act as a support structure, endorsing professional development from within (e.g., Stylianides & Delaney, 2011; Trust, 2012).

4.1 Mathematics teacher professional networks in the Egyptian context

In the Egyptian context, teacher communities of practice have traditionally stemmed from teacher professional development initiatives launched initially through the government, such as the National Network for Distance Training (NNDT) or, currently, the National Authority for Quality Assurance and Accreditation of Education (NAQAAE). Additionally, the teacher union offers teachers a social space for networking and exchanging ideas. According to scholarship (Abdou, 2017; Gouda & Banks, 2006), externally initiated teacher networks often fail to accomplish their intended aims as teachers lack the zeal to part-take in an imposed community. For the scope of this paper, we choose to focus on teacher professional networks that were created from within. This notion of an insider-driven community of change has been researched in the Egyptian context (El Tamami, 2017) and is referred to in this study as teacher professional networks (TPNs).

In a recent longitudinal study, educational researchers have been working with Egyptian teachers over several years. to create local teacher groups and facilitate interactions among them (Zaalouk et al., 2021). TPNs have been identified as the best context for introducing change in the teaching and learning practice of mathematics. Situated within the same micro-culture, teachers exchanged ideas about how re-envisioned ways of teaching mathematics could be implemented. These ways were highly contextualized and effective.

A similar study (Makramalla & Stylianides, 2021) identified the TPNs to be analogous to a double-edged-sword. TPNs can act as support systems in the diffusion of a re-envisioned methodology for mathematics instruction, as presented earlier. Yet, teachers who operated in a micro-culture that did not endorse a given change that they supported reported feeling marginalized on account of their different pedagogy.

4.2 Operationalizing teacher professional networks

As presented in the previous section, we choose to refer to TPNs as collective groups formed from within the system with the intention of socializing a given reform initiative. In our analysis of TPNs, we are interested in exploring responses of TPN members, criticizing or adopting a given reform initiative, based on their individual pedagogical beliefs that may vary or align with the culturally agreed on collective pedagogies in the group.

In light of our conceptualization of a collective culture, it seems that critical friendship would disrupt group loyalty in a collective culture. In other words, a teacher who acts as a critical friend, questioning the longstanding pedagogical practice of mathematics education in a given context, might be challenged to lose the group’s loyalty and protection in a collective culture.

Brodie and Chimhande (2020) highlighted the importance of communities of practice acting as critical friends to each other. This notion was coined by other scholars who have studied more broadly (Goos, 2020; Jaworski, 2020) the notion of communities of inquiry. A community where inquiry of practice takes place is a community whereby questioning, seeking, investigating and exploring knowledge for teaching, in teaching and as teaching is encouraged (Jaworski, 2006, 2020). Mathematics teachers are encouraged to deepen their engagement with critical questioning related to the nature and practice of mathematics in their situated context (Goos, 2020). This critical attitude generates a sustainable channel of re-constructed knowledge of mathematics and of the practice of teaching mathematics to suit the complex challenges that evolve as the profession of teaching mathematics develops across contextual boundaries (Jaworski, 2006).

Jaworski and Wood (2008) hence conceptualized communities of inquiry as being composed of three layers. The first layer presents how teacher communities of inquiry affect students to form their own communities of inquiry. The second layer shows how teachers themselves are constantly challenged to inquire further, thereby informing the continuous improvement of the third layer, namely, teacher professional development programs.

In this work, we use this critical notion of communities of practice to further finetune what we mean by TPNs. We are interested in situating this critical notion of communities of practice within the context of mathematics education reform in the Egyptian collective culture for teaching and learning mathematics. By adding the critical friendship notion to our operationalization of TPNs, we seek to unpack the degree to which a teacher community would welcome or marginalize group or individual suggestions with regards to the adoption of a socially reformed mathematics curricular pedagogy.

To conclude, building on the notions of mathematics communities in the literature (Goos, 2020; Jaworski, 2020), we define TPNs as networks created by the teachers, within schools, as part of a wider vision to diffuse best practices of teaching and learning mathematics that work in the particular school contexts. These are also spaces where peers come together to critically engage with questions relating to mathematics as a subject and the pedagogical practice of mathematics education.

5 Theoretical framework: The Goodson Change Model

The Goodson Change Model (2000) captures the complexity of change agency, power dynamics and collectivism in an intertwined manner, and it has been utilized to study change in educational settings in previous studies (Goodson, 2001). According to Goodson (2000), when educational change is initiated in a given context, multiple agents come into play to facilitate the diffusion of this change (Fig. 2). Goodson describes three levels of agency that come into play when diffusion of educational change (denoted by the star in Fig. 2) takes place in a given collective social context. The first level of agency, referred to as external agency, represents the wider system or macro-culture that would be affected by a given change in the ethos of teaching and learning. The second level, referred to as internal agency, represents the direct micro-culture in which the change would be practiced. The third level, referred to as personal agency, represents the individuals within that micro-culture who act as change agents to implement the suggested change in daily instruction.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Application of Goodson Change Model

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According to Goodson (2000), there often exists a push and pull dynamic between internal agency and external agency with one level of agency either favoring or resisting the change to be implemented. In other words, in some cases, the school, as an internal agent, acts as a change agent to its stationed wider societal macro-culture (the external agent) while, in other cases, unspoken societal norms dictate the means of operation in a given school context. This push and pull dynamic between the macro- and the micro-system can be balanced by the convictions of the personal agents within the micro-system (Goodson, 2000). Individual agents have the power to steer the change to be either aligned with or alienated from the micro-culture where they are situated.

In this research, we consider the EDU2.0 reform initiative in mathematics education to be the point where change is being introduced to the Egyptian education system. Furthermore, we consider the national society where the school is stationed as the external agency (we also refer to this as the macro-culture). The school that is being studied is considered as the internal agent (we also refer to this as the micro-culture) while the individual mathematics teachers are considered to be the personal agents.

Goodson’s (2000) work is mainly concerned with depicting the complexity and layering of change agency. As illustrated in Fig. 2, multiple layers of agency come into play when a change (in this case curricular reform) is introduced in an educational setting. A recent study by Andra et al. (2022) has explored the boundary lines between these layers of change agency. A personal agent that challenges the micro-culture by adopting a socially alien instructional pedagogy would be considered as crossing the boundary line between personal agency and internal agency. In the same way, a micro-culture that enforces its own educational dogma would be considered as crossing the boundary line between internal agency and external agency. The latter happens when a micro-culture is perceived to be challenging its stationed macro-culture. The element of criticality in our operationalization of TPNs allows for the exploration of the aforementioned two instances of boundary line crossing.

6 The scope of the study

The research we report herein took place in the transition period between the implementation of the pre-reform mathematics education system and the adoption of the reformed mathematics education curriculum (EDU2.0) in Egypt. Since the reformed curriculum was built on problem solving as one of its four main pillars (Badran & Toprak, 2020), we sought to unpack how mathematics teachers in these transition stages related to the construct of problem solving and hence their stance towards the education reform dogma. Specifically, we focused on the role that buy in of TPNs (or lack thereof) played in the diffusion of the underpinning ethos of the reformed curriculum.

When considering the diffusion of the reformed curriculum from within a given system, as per our theoretical framework (Goodson, 2000), we distinguish between three different forms of agency: the macro-culture of the wider national society, where the school is stationed (also referred to as external agency); the micro-culture made up by TPNs within the school (the internal agency of the school itself); and the personal agency of individual teachers within the school. For the particular context of Egypt, we have characterized both the micro-culture and the macro-culture as collective, meaning that the TPN within a school has the power to steer the way mathematics instruction is both perceived and implemented (Hofstede, 1980; House et al., 2004). Also, we have operationalized a TPN as a network of teachers that (1) have been created from within the school and (2) where individual members act as professional critical friends to each other. Given our understanding of the collective culture principles and how they could marginalize a teacher who perceives pedagogical practices in mathematics differently from others, we considered it worthwhile to explore the notion of criticality of teacher professional networks. Using the Goodson Change Model as our theoretical framework, we aimed to explore the degree of agency that TPNs have in terms of diffusing change amongst personal agents, within the school as a micro-culture and within the wider stationed societal national macro-culture.

We sought to address the following research questions: Within the social setting of a collective institutional micro-culture and a wider collective national Egyptian macro-culture:

  1. (1)

    What is the role of TPNs in personal agents’ adoption of a culturally foreign pedagogical reform initiative?

  2. (2)

    What is the role of TPNs in the internal institutional socialization of a reform in mathematics education?

  3. (3)

    What is the role of TPNs in the external socialization of a reform in mathematics education in their wider situated society?

7 Research design

Since the Goodson Change Model (Goodson, 2000) builds on the notion that multiple layers of social agency influence the way change is embraced in an educational setting, it was important that our research design captures these multiple layers. To do so, we chose to utilize the embedded case study model (Yin, 2009) to frame our larger research design methodology (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3
figure 3

Embedded Case Study Model (adapted from Yin, 2009)

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Yin (2009) distinguishes between single case studies and single embedded case studies. The latter refers to two single case studies that are situated in a wider common contextual setting. Comparing Fig. 3 to our presentation of the theoretical framework in Fig. 2 reveals a common pattern: Both designs present themselves as composed of multiple layers. We frame our exploration to incorporate a comparison between two TPNs, formed at two schools that are situated in the same wider societal macro-culture, as will be further elaborated in the sampling section. Being situated within the same wider macro-culture, the two TPNs are affected by the same wider national societal influencing factors (external agency).

We therefore frame this study as a comparative exploration of two embedded case studies (Yin, 2009). Situated in the same wider national curricular reform regulation settings and being influenced by the same external collectivist societal factors (macro-culture), the intention is to explore how two schools (two micro-cultures) have incorporated the diffusion of curricular change in mathematics education. The research design is illustrated in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4
figure 4

The Embedded Case study Design used in the research

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Building on Fig. 4 as our holistic research design and guided by the Goodson Change Model as our theoretical framework, we outline next our sampling rationale. We start with the wider macro-culture, where the two case studies are situated. This is followed by the micro-culture sampling details of the two case studies comprising the TPNs that we compared. Finally, we provide details about the personal agents within each TPN.

7.1 Macro-culture sampling: context of embedded case studies

When sampling, we focus on two external influencing factors: (1) the national curriculum reform integration influencing factor and (2) the collective culture societal influencing factor. In what follows, we elaborate how both TPNs were similarly affected by these factors.

Firstly, the two schools are located in the same Egyptian governorate and district. They are therefore administered by the same district leadership, under the larger commissioning of the MOE. Hence, both schools were subjected to the curricular reform in mathematics education in the same way. Prior to the curricular reform, both schools were adopting the same memorization-heavy mathematics curriculum.

Secondly, the two schools are governed by the same wider private school governing body. They both follow the same mission and vision of this wider governing body and socialize the same collective pedagogical values of this private governing body (Boules, 2016). According to these collectively socialized values, mathematics teachers at both schools would be encouraged to initiate forming their own TPNs. The governing rules for forming the TPNs abide by the same wider private school governing values (Boules, 2016). They encourage criticality of the community, respect of teacher individuality and the autonomy of formation of a TPN from within, which are the guiding factors for our operationalization of TPNs for the purposes of this study. Given the above, we can confidently say that the two schools share a common wider macro-culture (external agency).

7.2 Micro-culture sampling: context of teacher professional networks

The two schools are governed by the same private institution. It is customary for the wider institution to encourage the creation of mathematics TPNs as part of its teacher support strategy. The intention is for the TPNs to come together, share strategies that work in the classroom, explore subject matter related challenges and critically engage together in discussions about the meaning of mathematics. In our initial involvement with the two TPNs, we noticed that, while one group was open to exploring new landscapes and critical in its discussion approach, the second group tended to be more reserved and traditional. We therefore found it suitable to conduct a comparative study between these two groups. Since most other societal influencing factors were common, we would be able to explore the role of the criticality (or lack thereof) of TPNs on the socializing of the education reform agenda of the MOE, both within the schools (RQs 1 and 2) and within the wider society of the schools (RQ3).

7.3 Personal agency sampling

Both groups were comparable in terms of the (1) number of participating teachers, (2) gender distribution of participating teachers, (3) distribution of novice and experienced teachers and (4) presence of the school’s mathematics lead. Regarding (4), since we sought to capture power dynamics within the micro-culture, the presence of the mathematics lead had to be common across the two TPNs. Table 1 presents the constitution of each group.

Table 1 Sampling
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7.4 Data collection method: Focus groups

Research suggests that the holding of focus groups presents itself as a culturally suitable medium in the Middle East (Bailey, 2012). Being a collective culture, participants of previous studies in the region have reported feeling uncomfortable to be singled out when asked to participate in other forms of qualitative data collection methods, including individual interviews. Furthermore, the focus group setting made it easier to capture power dynamics within each TPN. Relatedly, since our intention was partly to explore the marginalization or inclusion of teachers with pedagogical perspectives that would naturally alienate them from the mainstream, it was important to have the data collected in the form of a focus group. The focus group discussion took the form of a semi-structured, protocol-led series of activities. For the purpose of this paper, we focus on a single activity, namely, that of engaging teachers in reflective practice based on the study of three hypothetical teacher narrative accounts.

7.5 Data collection instruments

In order to explore the degree to which the teachers related to the education reform in mathematics, teachers engaged in three cycles of reflective practice (Jones & Jones, 2013) that were guided by three different hypothetical teacher narrative accounts, each portraying the intended education reform being socialized in a different way. The narrative accounts were adapted from similar accounts by Stein et al. (2000). Our intention was that the narratives would create a third space where teachers could critically engage with different ways of socializing the mathematics education reform at hand. According to Taber (2013), creating this third space enables the teachers to share their own perceptions more openly, thus enhancing validity of the study’s findings.

The three hypothetical narrative accounts each depicted a potential response to the integration of the mathematics curriculum reform. The first hypothetical narrative account presented a fictional case where the teacher adjusted the reformed mathematics curriculum to fit into the memorization-based mold of instruction that they were used to. The second one presented a fictional case where the teacher adopted the reformed curriculum with little appreciation to its underpinning ethos. Finally, the third one presented a teacher who critically engaged with the reformed mathematics curriculum and accordingly adjusted their instructional practice.

As the teacher participants engaged with each of these fictional narratives, they were led via a series of questions in a reflective practice activity. The intention of the activity was to explore which of the three fictional narrative accounts were the most relatable by the group and/or individual teachers. Variation patterns in teacher relatedness to different fictional narrative accounts were analyzed. The way the TPN responded to these variations of opinion was also analyzed. The intention was that the multi-layering of this reflective practice activity would strengthen the validity of the data collection (Yin, 2009).

7.6 Data analysis

The dataset comprised the translated and transcribed recordings of the teacher focus groups. The first author acted as the facilitator of the focus group activity. The study was conducted at the onset of the implementation of the reformed mathematics curriculum EDU2.0. As at the time of the data collection the educational reform in Egypt was yet to be initiated, there was no account of existing codes, clusters or code mappings that would plot patterns and coding clusters addressing the issue of teacher buy in to the reformed mathematics curriculum. It was also difficult to identify codes, clusters or patterns from culturally similar education reform contexts in the Middle East that could be used for this purpose. To the best of our knowledge, there was scarcity of analytical frameworks that would capture the full complexity of the codes. Also, the data seemed to present interesting patterns that would have been lost had we adopted an existing mapping framework from a different context. As a result, we used inductive data coding (Yin, 2009).

In the inductive data coding process, we were guided by the Goodson Change Model (Goodson, 2000), our underpinning theoretical framework. We were also guided by some patterns for socializing education contained in the fictional narrative accounts that had been created as an adaption of similar fictional narratives in previous studies (Stein et al., 2000). Codes that represented either of the three forms of agency (Goodson, 2000), or the interrelation between them, were identified, clustered and mapped out for each focus group. Focus group codes and cluster maps were then cross examined and contrasted. Emerging clusters were mapped at the level of each embedded case study. Finally, identified patterns and clusters were compared across the two embedded case studies.

For the purposes of this paper, we focus on patterns relating to the socializing of the mathematics education reform from the perspective of internal agency. To illustrate the inductive coding process, Table 2 presents one example of an embedded cluster; in no form is Table 2 exhaustive of the entire data coding process.

Table 2 Inductive Data Coding: An Illustrative Example
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Identified data codes were then cross examined and connected into larger data clusters. Data clusters together formed a data mapping process. The intention was to create a data map that depicts the way the Goodson Change Model (Goodson, 2000) was unfolding in the particular analysis of power dynamics surrounding the change in mathematics curricular ethos. Identified patterns were then contrasted across the two embedded cases.

8 Findings

Our aim was to explore the impact of TPNs in terms of socializing education reform in mathematics, both internally and externally, with a particular focus on a collective cultural context. In light of the Goodson framework (Goodson, 2000), we present findings at the boundary lines of each of the different layers of the framework (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5
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Findings mapped against the theoretical framework

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Firstly, we will present comparative findings in relation to the acceptance or alienation of personal agency by the wider internal agency and the role thereof in the wider socializing of education reform (RQ1). Secondly, we will present findings about the role of the micro-culture itself in socializing education reform in mathematics education within the system (RQ2). Finally, we will present findings about the role of the internal agency in the wider external agency forming the macro-layer of the system (RQ3).

8.1 Micro-culture and personal agency

When we consider the culture of the TPN at school 2 [S2], we notice how teachers placed a lot of emphasis on developing a sense of belonging to the group. This naturally meant that individuals who had opinions different from the mainstream opinion were subtly pushed throughout the discussion to follow the mainstream opinion. One teacher [T1, S2] mentioned:

“I think it would be good to try to get the students to think for themselves and develop a concept gradually through a communal activity but now that I’ve heard the other opinions, I also agree that this would cause too much chaos and would be too disruptive. After all, it’s important to maintain discipline in the classroom.”

Similarly, a second teacher in the same school [T2, S2] seemed reluctant to respond to a culturally foreign suggestion that would challenge the status quo. They presented their opinion in the following way: “I don’t think the suggestion by [T3, S2] will work. The students are used to our way of doing things. Change will just confuse everybody.”

As evident from these two extracts and more generally from the coded clusters identified for the TPN at S2, personal agents in the system that sought to approach mathematics pedagogy differently were institutionally alienated, resulting in them choosing to conform to the mainstream so that they would not be socially marginalized. The reason for alienating a personal agent who perceived the mathematics curriculum as different from the mainstream could be traced back to several coded clusters. The two main identified clusters would be: (1) a culture where procedural mastery is deemed important both as a tool for conceptual explanation as well as preparation for the test “we can then use this procedure to explain to them the concept”; and (2) a culture where the teacher owns the problem-solving process and imparts the necessary knowledge on students. Student ownership is avoided out of a fear of creating ‘confusion’ within the student body by presenting a non-static nature of mathematics: “I think it is important to pass on the information in the simplest way” [T5, S2].

The TPN at school 1 [S1], on the other hand, seemed to naturally support the individuality of each teacher. One teacher [T2, S1] reported:

“I once read about a pedagogical idea that I thought was worth exploring. I brought it here [to the TPN] to one of our discussions and received so much support to pursue it. I couldn’t do it during the main class time so I included it as an activity. It was different but it worked and now many of my colleagues are doing this idea at their classes too.”

This culture that embraces individuality naturally supported individuals when they expressed their tendency to adopt problem solving as part of the education reform. Even if the idea seemed foreign to the mainstream, they were at least eager for one person to try it out and were more open to socializing it internally as a result. The local micro-culture hence endorsed personal agents in their attempts to doing things differently, thereby reducing the personal agents’ fear of marginalization from the mainstream group if they were to suggest doing things differently.

The analysis of the identified clusters reveals two main findings with regards to the endorsement of the micro-culture to teacher personal agency. Firstly, a culture where student exploration is encouraged, both in terms of establishing connections between studied concepts and a studied procedure and in terms of connection making between concepts and their practical applications. As a result, teachers are encouraged to each research and find different applications to a concept and are not alienated for not following the mainstream.

“As an activity, I designed the problem for them [the students] in the form of the puzzle where they had to establish conceptual connections. It worked! Meanwhile many others [teachers] are doing the puzzle with students as well. [T3,S1]”

Secondly, a culture where the teacher encourages the student on their exploration journey of the task. “Confusion is a natural step in the student exploration journey”. [T4,S1] This perceived teacher image naturally leads to a multiplicity in the unfolding of the teacher role, depending on the task. Teachers are encouraged to be unique, taking on different roles.

8.2 Micro-culture and socializing of education reform

Since the research questions of this paper focus more on the exploration of the boundary lines (Fig. 5), we only briefly present the findings pertaining to the micro-culture itself. It was clear that the problem-based application of mathematics education reform was an approach that was foreign to both TPNs. Below are two extracts from the focus groups in each of the schools, indicating how alienating the reform seemed to be perceived.

  1. (1)

    “They [the EDU2.0 curriculum developers] suddenly changed everything. We didn’t have enough time to adjust to this new way of teaching.” [T3, S1]

  2. (2)

    “We now have a new curriculum [EDU2.0] but it is so different from the way we always did things” [T2, S2].

Yet, the TPN at school 1 displayed a higher likelihood of at least trying out something that was different, when compared to the TPN at school 2 that automatically rejected the idea claiming that it would not work and indicated more comfort proceeding with the status quo.

When discussing the third fictional narrative, one mathematics teacher from school 1 told the story of them trying out a new approach (the puzzle referred to above) that they had read about on the internet. They reported being endorsed by the wider school leadership to try it out. The TPN acted as a space where this pedagogic approach could be further discussed and tested. When the teacher tried it out, other teachers were compelled to also adopt this approach in their classes. Teachers in school 2, on the other hand, rejected a narrative that was foreign to them, claiming: “We have always done it this way [the traditional way] and it has been working so far. Why try out something different? This will only lead to more confusion.” [T5, S2].

8.3 Micro-culture and macro-culture

Discussions within the TPN at school 1 revealed how the school micro-culture positioned itself as an agent that would impose change on its stationed society if it were convinced that this change of pedagogy was in the best interests of students. The group leader claims:

“We don’t care what parents think. We don’t care what people in the society at wider think. If they sent their child to our school, then they have to accept that this is the way we do things over here. If this is uncomfortable to them then they can take their child and go to any other school.”

If education reform is socialized within the system, as discussed in the previous section, such a micro-culture presents itself as more robust to enforce its dogma on its stationed society (macro-culture) irrespective of whether the ethos underpinning the education reform in mathematics is widely accepted within the society. The school perceives itself as the pedagogical expert and therefore views its wider public engagement role as one that would foster and promote change more widely in the society. Findings were very different in the TPN of school 2 in that regard. The group leader claimed the following:

“At the end of the day, we are not a stand-alone entity. We exist in a certain society and we have to accept that the society where we are situated has certain expectations. So, we need to align ourselves to these wider expectations.”

School 2 as a micro-culture hence perceived its role as a servant of the society and not as a change agent within it. If the ethos underpinning the education reform in mathematics is socially alien to the community (macro-culture), then the school is less likely to embrace it.

9 Discussion

The research we reported herein took place at the onset of the implementation of the mathematics education national reform in Egypt. This reform can be classified – as explained earlier – as a naïve notion of mathematics education reform, whereby change is channeled hierarchically (Spillane and Thompson, 1997). In our examination, we focused on the inward facing meaning of social capital (Drake & Sherin, 2006), namely institutionally created TPNs, which we operationalized drawing on principles of critical friendships within a community (Jaworski, 2020). We were interested to explore the level of inclusion or marginalization of a foreign mathematics pedagogy at the different levels of change agency. We also presented features of the wider Egyptian collective societal context (Zaalouk, 2013), where the education reform is to be socialized. Using the Goodson Change Model (Goodson, 2000) as our underpinning theoretical framework, we discussed levels of change agency and problematized questions of influence across these layers. We framed our focus to emphasize the element of boundary crossing across these layers and specifically oriented our research questions to consider the boundary lines between personal and internal agency, and between internal and external agency.

The findings of the comparative case study of the two schools we reported earlier highlight the dual role that a micro-culture can play in socializing or marginalizing a culturally foreign mathematics education pedagogy. In our exploration of the boundary lines between the micro-culture and the macro-culture (RQs 2 and 3) and the micro-culture and personal agents within it (RQs 1 and 2), we noted that a common pattern exists across the two boundary lines (between personal agency and internal agency, and between internal agency and external agency). Strong micro-cultures – such as the case of TPN at school 1 – socialize change within them and hence personal agents within them find it easy to cross the boundary line between personal and internal agency without feeling marginalized. Strong micro-cultures are also willing to embrace individuality and view their role as change agents to their stationed macro-culture.

Weak micro-cultures – such as the case of TPN at school 2 – are resistant to promoting change within the system, are less likely to support individuality and are more likely to be overtaken by the prominent trend of the wider macro-culture. In other words, the response that the micro-culture presents to the individual agent within the system mirrors the response it gives to the wider macro-culture. Hence, studying the boundary lines of a micro-culture casts light on the role of the micro-culture itself as a change agent promoting inclusivity and fighting the marginalization of the ‘other’ who seems to perceive mathematics in a pedagogically different way.

Viewing the findings in light of our operationalization of boundary lines and boundary line crossing (Andra et al., 2022) makes it clear that there is a connection between the three research questions that guided this research. Being situated at the center of the three layers of change agency, the micro-culture has two boundary lines. A strong micro-culture affects both the internal and the external diffusion of education reform in mathematics education. The micro-culture cannot be seen as either affecting the internal or the external diffusion; if it is affecting one, it is most likely affecting the other one as well.

When studying the boundary lines of a micro-culture, we see that a strong micro-culture can empower both personal change agents within the system. It impacts the socializing of education reform to a wider macro-culture, as was the case for TPN in school 1. This aligns with findings in previous studies of the Egyptian mathematics education reform context (Ghaleb and Abdelsattar, 2020). When criticality is encouraged within a micro-culture in the collective context of TPNs, the impact is inward and outward facing. Individuals within the system are collectively encouraged to socialize a new way of conceptualizing mathematics. Individuals within the system do not fear being marginalized for practicing their individuality in relating to pedagogical aspects of mathematics. Instead, they are encouraged to do things differently. At the same time, the school presents itself collectively as a unit that socializes the dogma of education reform within its stationed macro-culture.

10 Implications for future research

This study is situated in the context of education reform that is channeled through the local government and designed in collaboration with local and international agents. The latter are often contextually alien to the local cultural and social context and history of mathematics instruction. The study sheds light on key change agents that are often overlooked in the hierarchical channeling of educational reform, namely, local mathematics TPNs.

In light of the findings of this study, it is important that future research further pursues locally suitable approaches to fostering effective micro-cultures within schools, particularly focusing on the collective community setting of a mathematics TPN. There are two ways to see the potential that collective teaching and learning communities have to offer, particularly when it comes to their ability to foster and promote TPNs.

The collective nature of the community makes it, on the one hand, locally acceptable to promote the internal formation of TPNs within a school (House et al., 2004). On the other hand, the collective nature of the community makes it challenging that these TPNs become networks of mathematics educators, where criticality is encouraged and internal change agents are free to practice mathematics in the way that works best for them without being marginalized on account of their pedagogical beliefs by the mainstream group. This research suggests that the latter is the key empowering factor to the TPNs. If TPNs are to be equipped with the capacity to diffuse education reform in mathematics, each within their stationed macro-culture, they need to be encouraged to not marginalize individual agents within them that dare to see or do things differently.

Future research needs to explore ways to capitalize on this existing potential in a collective social structure, so that boundary crossing can be supported in this setting. Questions of socializing education reform into a collective culture of teaching and learning practice are not only relevant for the Egyptian context. Many countries’ cultures in the developing world can be classified as collective (Hofstede, 2001). Surprisingly, many of these countries’ education reform roadmaps are operated by foreign entities that are individualistic in nature (Zaalouk, 2013). Future research should explore means to fostering a critical approach for empowering collective microcultures from within, so that in turn they can socialize education reform within their institutions and throughout their stationed communities.