Changing classroom cultures, Not Changing Mathematics
Together with the findings of the research that I reviewed in the first section of this chapter, these patterns suggest that class, culture and gender are important organizers in students' developing relationships with mathematics. These relationships are fluid of course, but powerful gender discourses such as those voiced by Creese et al.'s teacher and pupils and the performance discourses that we saw in Chapters 2 to 5 constrain the range of identities that are available to mathematics learners. At the same time, institutional practices of audit and accountability serve to pressurize both teachers and students. Sometimes students resist these pressures and discourses, but not always successfully: compare how the students at Farnden and Middleton developed their own collaborative community of practice, and Debbie at Bradley self-authors as someone who has "a right to learn," while Janet, in Chapter 2, accepts the offered position of a "quiet girl" and Lizzie at Northdown School criticizes her new lower set for its lack of investigative mathematics but says she is happier there because of its less exposing demands.