Abstract
In this chapter, we set out to propose a framework for reflecting the normative assumptions that often remain implicit in sociological analyses of school mathematics practices. We begin by problematizing the implicit normativity in our own prior research on mathematics classroom registers in contexts of low expectation. This leads us to assume that normativity is an intrinsic feature of critical sociological research in mathematics education. With the model of pedagogic rights, we propose a heuristics for analysing classroom discourse in a way that a) allows explicit and substantiated normative judgments, and b) problematizes its very own political foundation, from where normative judgement is carried out. Firstly, we re-analyse two classroom episodes in order to reveal how students’ pedagogic rights are recognized or denied in mathematics classrooms. Secondly, we explore a third classroom episode to suggest that teachers should be considered holders of pedagogic rights in a similar manner as students. In the concluding remarks, we summarize the main potentials of the normative framework of pedagogic rights and problematize the implications of an explicit injection of normativity.
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Notes
- 1.
Michel Sertl was not among the researchers authoring this paper. Rather, as a referee of Hauke’s PhD thesis, he took the role of challenging the implicit normative assumption in it.
- 2.
See Fraser and Honneth (2003) for an exhaustive and critical discussion on the relation between distribution and recognition as general social categories that facilitate critique.
- 3.
“Victim” (German: Opfer), is a common word among youths, mostly used to ridicule someone for her or his supposed inferiority.
- 4.
As Bernstein defines a pedagogic relationship as an essentially asymmetric relation, it might at first glance appear paradox to expand the space of pedagogic rights on to teachers. This confronts the intrinsic asymmetry of pedagogic relations with the intrinsic symmetry of rights. However, on a pragmatic level, we accept this apparent contradiction for the sake of keeping one comprehensive model and for the sake of emphasizing that the recognition of students’ and teachers’ rights reflexively affect each other. On a conceptual level, we suggest to link pedagogy (asymmetry) and rights (symmetry) dialectically. This theoretical elaboration is, however, beyond the scope of this chapter. Thus we suggest it as a desideratum. Nevertheless, such dialectical conceptualization is coherent with the philosophy of rights by Axel Honneth or Ralf Dahrendorf to which we referred earlier in this chapter.
- 5.
The normative horizon of pedagogic rights is, nevertheless, of course not absolute, but bound to the declaration of “effective democracy” as a ruler for evaluation. Needless to say that an autocratic system might itself see no problems with pedagogic rights being denied.
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Straehler-Pohl, H., Sertl, M. (2018). The Recognition of Pedagogic Rights in Mathematics Classrooms: A Framework for Reflecting Implicit Normative Assumptions in the Sociology of Mathematics Education. In: Gellert, U., Knipping, C., Straehler-Pohl, H. (eds) Inside the Mathematics Class. Advances in Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-79045-9_2
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