In this book, comparisons are made between the practices of classrooms in a variety of different school systems around the world. The abiding challenge for classroom research is the realization of structure in diversity. The structure in this case takes the form of patterns of participation: regularities in the social practices of mathematics classrooms. The expansion of our field of view to include international rather than just local classrooms increases the diversity and heightens the challenge of the search for structure, while increasing the significance of any structures, once found. In...

In this volume scholars from diverse strands of research have contributed their perspectives on a process of mathematisation, which renders social, economical or political relationships increasingly formal. At the same time, mathematical skills lose their importance as they become replaced by diverse technological tools; a process of demathematisation takes place. The computerization of financial transactions, calculation of taxes and fees, comparison of prices as well as orientation by means of GPS, visualisation of complex data and electronic voting systems - all these mathematical...