One Teacher and a Class of School Students: Their perception of the culture of their mathematics classroom and its construction

Abstract

In this paper, the culture of the mathematics classroom is inspected through the lens of one teacher and one class of school students. The intention here is to privilege the voices of the participants, particularly those of the young people themselves, whose views and experiences are sometimes absent from educational studies. A metaphor of spaciousness is invoked in drawing together curriculum, pedagogy, epistemology and classroom practices and relationships. In the classroom under study, the students developed connected and authoritative understandings about the nature of mathematics; they linked these to the classroom relationships and linked these in turn to the curriculum. The comments from the students suggest that a reappraisal and renegotiation of what it means to be a teacher in the secondary mathematics classroom is timely.