Ventriloquating the meanings of mathematics

Abstract

Recent calls for reform in mathematics education have focused on enriching teacher knowledge and classroom activity to make students more active participants in the construction of knowledge. This approach underestimates the power of institutional histories to frame participants’ views of schooling. In particular, it ignores the perspectives students and parents bring to reforms that are often implemented in their schools without their knowledge or assent. In this paper, we explore how parents and students construct meanings of new instructional organization and activities, particularly as they use experience to understand the changes imposed in the name of reform. We argue that the meaning of mathematics as a differentiating mechanism, which reform practices are meant to transform, was used differentially by participants as they responded to reform. Further, we examine how the meaning made by students were very similar to those voiced by parents. We use Bakhtin’s notion of ventriloquation which describes how individuals appropriate others’ words for their own use. Finally, we venture some suggestions for why certain children and their parents resist the democratization of the mathematics curriculum while others embrace it. © 1996, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.