Democratic Actions in School Mathematics and the Dilemma of Conflicting Values (original) (raw)
This chapter reports and problematizes relationships between the expected democratic actions as part of the politically expected democratically inclusion of students’ wishes and concerns; and students’ valuing of mathematical activities in mathematics classrooms, departing from the Swedish results from a large-scale quantitative cross-cultural survey. We asked what are the conflicts between most valued activities by Swedish students and the valuing of democratic actions. The quantitative study showed that students value “knowing the times tables” and “teachers’ explanations” and “correctness” over explorative, communicational and collaborative activities. We discuss the cultural and historical reasons behind these results and argue that we must understand the valuing of times tables or teachers’ explanations as an expression of enculturated and therefore culturally valued actions in mathematics classrooms, where this enculturation takes place not only in school, but in conversations...
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