Reframing participation: How mathematics classrooms afford opportunities for mathematical activity that is meaningful to students from diverse social and cultural backgrounds

The dissertation researches the development and negotiation of practices of equity and mathematics reform in three high school mathematics classrooms with highly diverse populations of learners. Drawing on theoretical insights from the cultural practice and the situative perspectives, I utilize the construct of linking to examine the operation of classroom norms and practices on the sociocultural practices of students. A guiding question framed this research:(1) How do reform-based mathematics classrooms afford and constrain links to the social and cultural practices that students develop in communities outside of the classroom?; To capture the complexity of the emergence of linking in moment-to-moment classroom interaction and the development of structures for participation over time, I conducted multi-level interaction analyses of videotape documentation and observation transcripts that I collected during the 2001–2002 school year. This process was triangulated with interviews, surveys, and student shadowing transcripts to reflect the meanings participants made of their activities.; Results indicate that reform-based mathematics classrooms that share curricular and pedagogical approaches may nevertheless hold significantly different versions of equitable mathematics learning. One basis for this difference lies in the way they define and organize meaningful mathematical activity. Three patterns emerged among the classroom participation structures: (1) a polarized participation structure where mathematical participation was self-contained, (2) a co-existing participation structure where multiple forms of participation could coincide in activity, and (3) an open participation structure where all participation was transformed into mathematical activity.; Three claims resulted from this study: (1) The study of opportunities for participation in mathematics classrooms—who gets to participate and in what way—is a productive interpretive framework for understanding how different access is afforded to the mathematics learning. (2) Opportunities for participation must be examined with respect to distinctions in classroom participation afforded by classroom norms and practices, and the handling of these distinctions in moment-to-moment classroom activity. (3) Classrooms in which the need for students to reconcile their sociocultural practices and identities in order to engage classroom mathematical practices is taken to be important create structures for participation that afford opportunities for students to negotiate what counts as meaningful mathematics learning.