Entering the Community of Practice: Power, Authority and Emotion
As my researchers show, students experience exclusion from mathematics for a number of reasons: there are patterns in pedagogic practices which favor some but not others, while students themselves bring particular histories, experiences and beliefs with them to the classroom which inscribe the identities positionings with relation to mathematics which are available to them. Beliefs about mathematics are often enacted within classroom discourse and practice, itself driven in many respects by institutional constraints and government-level demands. Of prime importance among these beliefs are those which emphasize speed and a climate of high-stakes assessment these simply serve to re-emphasize and reinforce practices which differentiate between learners.