Parents: support or obstacle for curriculum innovation?

Abstract

Although systemic reform seems to be a broadly accepted framework for educational change, concrete reform projects still face the uncertainty of how to meet the necessary requirements. This paper considers the case of a curriculum reform process in primary mathematics education that has a focus on the involvement and influence of parents. The data consists of a short address to the parents of first‐graders printed in the teacher’s version of a textbook. In this address, the parents are introduced to the new concept of active‐explorative learning and allocated a specific role within the process of change. By means of discourse analysis and the sociological ideas of exclusion/inclusion, autonomy, and expert/non‐technical discourse, the long‐term consequences of the social role assigned to parents in the programme is discussed.

Acknowledgements

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has made this paper possible through the award of a Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship. I gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments made by the anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

Uwe Gellert is a professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Hamburg, Von‐Melle‐Park 8, Hamburg 20146, Germany; e‐mail: [email protected]‐berlin.de. His research has focused on pre‐service and inservice teacher education in mathematics in Germany and Chile, on mathematical literacy, and on the relationship between mathematics and common sense in mathematics education. His on‐going research examines formal education from a socio‐cultural perspective.

1. For similar results in the context of Latino mathematics achievement in the US, see Ortiz‐Franco and Flores (2001).

2. The address to the parents is my translation from the German original (Berger et al. 1998: 4).

3. For instance, Huckstep and Rowland (2000) demystify the relation between mathematics and creativity.

4. As in the German fairy‐tale, a hedgehog is a symbol for cleverness.

Gellert, U. (2001) Innovation des Alltags—Alltag der Innovation: Rekonstruktionen alltäglicher Innovationsprozesse am Fall des Mathematikunterrichts der Grundschule, Habilitation thesis, Free University of Berlin

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Notes on contributors

Uwe Gellert

Uwe Gellert is a professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Hamburg, Von‐Melle‐Park 8, Hamburg 20146, Germany; e‐mail: [email protected]‐berlin.de. His research has focused on pre‐service and inservice teacher education in mathematics in Germany and Chile, on mathematical literacy, and on the relationship between mathematics and common sense in mathematics education. His on‐going research examines formal education from a socio‐cultural perspective.