Centering Children in Mathematics Education Classroom Research

Abstract

Drawing on a 3-year interpretive study that followed a cohort of children from prekindergarten to Grade 1, this article presents results of a multiple case study, which demonstrated that although two children had the same teachers, classmates, and curricula over 3 years, their experiences in the three successive mathematics classrooms were quite different from each other (although consistent for each child). The two focal children did not have equitable access to their teachers’ pedagogical moves, and this lack of access was easy to overlook in transcripts of whole-class discussions. The study suggests that more research needs to represent mathematics lessons from the perspectives of children and youth, particularly those students who engage with teachers infrequently or in atypical ways.