Educ Stud Math (2014) 87:241248

DOI 10.1007/s10649-014-9573-z

Whither social theory?

Alexandre Pais & Paola Valero

Published online: 5 September 2014

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract What is the place of social theory in mathematics education research, and what is it
for? This special issue of Educational Studies in Mathematics offers insights on what could be
the role of some sociological theories in a field that has historically privileged learning theories
coming from psychology and mathematics as the main theoretical frames informing research.
Although during the last 10 years the term socio-cultural has become part of the accepted
and widespread trends of mathematics education research when addressing learning, this issue
gathers a collection of papers that depart from a socio-cultural approach to learning and
rather deploy sociological theories in the analysis of mathematics education practices. In this
commentary paper, we will point to what we see to be the contributions of these papers to the
field. We will do so by highlighting issues that run through the six papers. We will try to
synthetize what we think are the benchmarks of the social approach to mathematics education
that they propose. We will also take a critical stance and indicate some possible extensions of
the use of social theory that are not addressed in this special issue but nonetheless are worth
being explored for a fuller understanding of the social in mathematics education.
Keywords Social theory . Knowledge . Enjoyment

1 What social theory?

To claim that research in mathematics education addresses the social has become a growing
trend in mathematics education research. The papers in this issue belong to scholars whose
work has been important in what Lerman (2000, 2006) had previously called the social turn
in mathematics education. In the broad research literature, the term social, however, has
several connotations that vary from a consideration of inter-individual relationships as triggers
of mathematical cognition (social interaction), to the societal conditions within which the
whole activity of mathematical educationnot only mathematics teaching and learningis
constituted. In this issue, the term social refers to a palette of conceptual tools from theories
A. Pais (*)
Education & Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University, 53 Bonsall Street,
Manchester M15 6GX, UK
e-mail: a.pais@mmu.ac.uk
P. Valero
Department of Learning and Philosophy, Aalborg University, Nyhavnsgade 14, 9000 Aalborg, Denmark
e-mail: paola@learning.aau.dk

242

A. Pais, P. Valero

in sociology and sociology of education. The authors appropriate these tools as lenses through
which it is possible to provide an analysis of mathematics education practices. Most importantly, as Morgan notes, they allow interpretations of how educational practices in mathematics
are organized and articulated in broader societal structures.
A common referent in the papers is the work of Basil Bernstein, British sociologist, and his
conceptualizations of language in relation to social positions, as well as of the structuring of
pedagogical languages in society. In particular, the theory of the structuring of pedagogical
discourses and the rules of structuration are appropriated in all papers to characterize the traits
of mathematics education regimes (proposed by Kanes, Morgan, & Tsatsaroni) in different
sites of practice (e.g., Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test items,
teacher education practices, educational policy in mathematics). Some papers also get hold of
some conceptual tools of the French philosopher Michel Foucault. In a surprising and
refreshing articulation of some tools of Bernstein and of Foucault, it is argued that while
Bernstein allows interpretations of the constitution of pedagogical discourses in mathematics,
Foucaults tools allow pointing to the connections between pedagogical discourses and the
broader dynamics of power. Concepts such as the rationality of discourses (used by Kanes,
Morgan, & Tsatsaroni) or governmentality (used by Tsatsaroni & Evans) allow the authors to
connect pedagogical discourses with power, by making visible their power effects on the
constitution of the subjectivities of learners, teachers and the very many other people involved
in the practices of mathematics education. One of the papers (Jorgensen, Gates, & Roper) also
appropriates some concepts from the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Concepts such as
field, capital and habitus are used to show the connection between individual dispositions in
mathematics education and social class.
The papers draw on a particular selection of sociological theoretical tools. These particular
theories have had a great impact in understanding and interpreting educational practices and
their relationship to broader social structures. While some of the papers present newer and
challenging directions for exploring mathematics education sociologically, some, we think, are
good illustrations of the type of arguments that the authors themselves have already published
in their previous work. They confirm similar interpretations in already published similar
studies. To the question of what socialor sociologicaltheories could throw light on
mathematics education practices, we believe that these papers propose strong alternatives.
However, the field still has many other avenues to explore than the ones put forward in these
papers. We will come back to this point later.

2 Why social theory?

Writing from a personal point of view, Morgan shares an experience which may well be shared
by many mathematics teachers and researchers when turning to social theory. Seeking a social
way of understanding mathematics education is not merely the will to satisfy a theoretical
caprice or the desire to start a methodological innovation. The search for social theory rather
comes from a need to make sense of many of the problems that students and teachers face in
their daily work, which cannot be given an account by using the language of mathematics and
psychology. For a teacher, there is enough research available to account for problems of how
students explore, for example, the notion of average through informal inferential learning, to
support students integration of statistical knowledge, or to use graphing software to teach
about algebraic expressions. But when posing what Morgan calls unsophisticated questions,
few answers are to be found in existing research. Questions on who fails in mathematics and
how such failure is connected to the very same pedagogy that apparently claims to be

Whither social theory?

243

inclusive resist any straightforward investigation. Yet, they make us aware that the answers
to the problems of systematic failure in school mathematics are not to be found in the
individuals cognition and performance. They remind us as well that such problems cannot
be tackled within the realms of mathematics teaching and learning alone. For all students to
have a chance of effectively succeeding, something will have to change elsewhere. As Lerman
pointed out, it is precisely this elsewherethe entire sociopolitical arena that organizes and
structures what it means to teach and learn mathematicsthat social theory brings into the
research gaze. The search for a broader research gaze goes hand in hand with a concern, from
the part of the researcher, with the connection between the specificities of mathematical
learning and teaching in the setting of the classroom, and the larger arenas of social institutions
and organizations where being mathematically competent is valorized.
Although the social approach to mathematics education may vary, as shown by the different
theoretical and methodological strategies displayed in the six articles of this issue, there are
some positions that are common to the papers. Firstly, as argued by Morgan and by Jorgensen,
Gates, and Roper, differences between people resist any kind of explanation that reduces them
to individuals. Rather, variations in peoples performance and engagement with mathematics
education have to be understood as a relation between them and social practices and structures.
The displacement from a focus on the individual to the social allowed researchers to go beyond
a strictly cognitivist approach to the teaching and learning of mathematics (Valero, 2004).
Failure in school mathematics is less a problem of deficitindividual or collectiveand
more a result of the way schooling is structured in todays society. As a result, when thinking
about change within a social approach, emphasis is given to a change in the structure instead of
a change in the person. Although the critique to the dominance of deficit models produced by
research is not new in mathematics education research, these papers show the importance of
keeping on challenging such pervasive tendency in research.
Secondly, sociological theories can provide researchers with tools to examine how the field
of larger political arrangements influences the field of classroom interactions. The paper from
Jorgensen, Gates, and Roper shows, from a Bourdieuian perspective, how social hierarchies
and social practices work to marginalize particular students while preserving the hegemony of
dominant classes. Social arrangements are schematized into classroom interactions that delineate the contours for succeeding in school mathematics. Social theory allows the nailing down
of these mechanisms. In particular, the papers from Tsatsaroni and Evans, and Kanes, Morgan,
and Tsatsaroni, show how international assessment technologies (e.g., Programme for the
International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and PISA) designed by economic
organizations (e.g., OECD) end up shaping not only the work of teachers but the work of
researchers as well.
Overall, social theory has the potential to disrupt straightforward approaches to the
teaching and learning of mathematics, by rendering problematic some of the taken for
granted assumptions that prevail in the field. It is precisely in this point that many of
these authors have turned to the theoretical tools of Michel Foucault, as a way of raising
a sharper and clearer critique than the one that frameworks such as Bernsteins or
Bourdieus theories would allow. The papers then seem to connect with a new understanding of the term critique in the mathematics education research literature: the
critique that tries to denaturalize the truths that circulate in society and mathematics
education research itself, about the desirability and goodness of an improved mathematics education. What we have called research on research (Pais & Valero, 2012; Valero,
2008) or the critical examination of the constructions that research itself performs and its
power effects is a point that recent work has highlighted (e.g., Knijnik & Wanderer,
2010; Lundin, 2012). The question emerges of the extent to which the papers present a

244

A. Pais, P. Valero

strong critique, a form of resistance towards the already well-known alignments of

mathematics education practices and research to the existing dominant order.

3 Is it enough?
For many of the authors here, it is important that sociological theory has the potential to spell
out the role school mathematics has in the exclusion of particular groups of people (Jorgensen,
Gates, & Roper), to analyse the role of social structures and policies in shaping the teaching
and learning of mathematics in schools (Morgan, Lerman), to criticize the role of international
assessment technologies in delineating what could be a meaningful mathematics education
(Tsatsaroni & Evans) or to interrogate common shared assumptions about mathematics teacher
education (Parker & Adler). Yet, none of these areas of study take research itself as a social
structure that provides ways of thinking and doing the teaching and learning of mathematics in
schools. Both Morgan and Lerman, when pointing out the variety of levels that can be
investigated in mathematics education research using social theory, do not mention research
itself as one of the loci for social enquiry. The problem is not only that researchers tend to
abstain themselves from more political enterprises, what Lerman calls the internal orientation
of mathematics education research community. Researchers also tend to position themselves
as the ones who can help solve the problem of failure in school mathematics, thus disavowing
a critical reading of their own role and of the research they produce in the problems they
identify.
To illustrate this point, we would like to come back to the pervasiveness of deficit
discourses in mathematics education research despite the many efforts that these
authors and many others before have put into providing broader interpretations of
failure in mathematics. Jorgensen, Gates, and Ropers analysis of the stories of two
childrenone in a situation of privilege and one in a situation of disadvantage
shows the structural constitution of their so perceived individual failure. They state
that their family habitus and linguistic capital provide explanations for the differences
in particular individual mathematical performances. The authors make a convincing
case to show how the whole system constructs advantaged or disadvantaged positions
for children. However, the language that the researchers use to discuss the analysis of
Cory, the child in disadvantage, seems to suggest an unfortunate conclusion: Cory, his
family and his surroundings accept their position; they are willing victims of their
own limitations; they are in complicity with the system, since, citing Bourdieu,
children and parents do not want to know they are subject to (Bourdieu, in
Jorgensen et al.) their disadvantaged class position. In our view, such a conclusion
could potentially contribute to very problematic new categories of deficiency. Firstly,
the use of the terms willing victim, acceptance, complicity, and not knowing
seems to imply a conscious act on the part of people with working class habitus.
Saying that they, in complicity, willingly accept their position would imply that they
are indeed responsible for their own position. If they are responsible, then their
disadvantage, although systemically constructed, becomes at the end their own fault.
Ultimately, the research, even if intending to break with explanations of failure in
mathematics that blame and individualize the individual, may risk displacing the
deficit to a social class. Furthermore, the analysis could suggest that the only way
of getting out of that state of complicity is, of course, participating in a really good
(mathematics) education, and being enlightened by those teachers or even researchers
who could show them, from the point of view of a middle class position, what they

Whither social theory?

245

lack of knowledge and awareness to emancipate themselves and the fellows of their
class.
As we explore elsewhere (Pais, 2013; Pais & Valero, 2012), it is not enough for a social
approach to mathematics education to criticize the misuses that both teachers and different
policies do of this school subject. Mathematics itself has to be problematized by means of
understanding its importance, not in itselfproblem solving, utility, beauty, cultural possibilities, and so onbut in terms of the place this subject occupies within a given societal
arrangement. As shown by some of the articles of this special issue, the importance of
mathematics in todays schooling is determined by external agencies that, under the discourse
of mathematical competencies, use mathematics for economic purposes. This way, the more
we emphasize the importance of mathematics in terms of its inherent characteristics, the more
we contribute to the constitution of a discourse that is then used to legitimize the kind of
political pressures that the articles of this special issue criticize. For instance, international
measurement instruments such as PISA and PIAAC are based on the idea that people transfer
and use mathematics in their everyday activities. Lundin (2012) shows that this discourse is a
result of the workings of mathematics education research itself. He argues that the importance
of mathematics as use-value does not reside within the object of mathematics itself. It is,
instead, the result of the subjective activity of all those who assert its importance. The fact that
modernity sees mathematics in the world results not from the real features of the world itself
but from the workings of modern institutions such as mathematics education. It is the
suggestion itself that mathematics is important for mundane activities that makes us believe
that mathematics is indeed important for such activities.
A strong social approach to mathematics education has to posit the value of school
mathematics, not in mathematics, but in the entire sociopolitical frame that privileges mathematics. This is obviously something not easy to do, even for researchers using social theory
(Pais & Valero, 2012). Such difficulty is exemplified in the article by Tsatsaroni and Evans.
Although displaying a serious and timely critical analysis of the economic forces that guide the
international assessments of school mathematics, the authors fall back into reinforcing the very
same truth that provides a rationale for the international comparative studies such as PIAAC.
They adhere to the need of defending the importance of mathematics for the daily life activities
of adults. Our questioning then becomes whether such truths can, at least momentarily, be
doubted.

4 The phantasm of knowledge

As recently showed by the sociological approach taken by Lundin (2012) to mathematics
education, researchers need to believe that a different, more egalitarian, mathematics education
could be possible, if only we could get rid of all the external pressures that undermine this
school subject. Lundin (2012) calls this idea the standard critique, which consists of describing the current state of affairs of school mathematics as suffering from a variety of
malfunctions imposed on it by external factors, and the function of research to fix them. Even
a social approach to mathematics education is not immune to this ideology. In the articles of
this special issue, the locus of critique is not mathematics itself, but the way this school subject
gets contaminated by a set of policies that undermine its genuine role. However, it is our
contention that a sociological approach cannot separate mathematics from the places where it
is used. In todays schooling, mathematics is about epistemological and economic values. It is
mainly about the fabrication of subjectivity. To struggle for a different valorization of
mathematics, immune to these negative uses, is to underestimate the power of social theory.

246

A. Pais, P. Valero

A radical use of social theory in mathematics education could open to conceiving the value
of mathematics as an effect of the place mathematics has come to occupy in current societies.
Mathematics itself is nothing outside the different places where it is used. There is no essence
to be saved in school mathematics. Research usually proceeds by throwing out the dirty water
(dismissing all the political and economic pressures that tend to reduce mathematics to the
format of the test) and keeping the healthy baby (mathematics). But a social approach invites
us to cast a critical light and throw away the baby instead, and deal with the dirty water. To
throw away mathematics is of course not easy for a field that has been living a privileged
existence within educational sciences precisely because of its adherence to the specificity of
mathematics (Pais & Valero, 2012). But perhaps this is the price to pay if we really want to do
social theory in mathematics education. In our view, there is a strong limitation in the use of
sociological theory when researchers still behave as uncritical ambassadors of mathematics. To
leave mathematics untouched and outside of the possibility of being criticized and
deconstructed is creating a limit to our understanding. No matter how much we would like
mathematics to be an adventure into knowledge, the ultimate problem solving technology or
the most crucial component of critical citizenship, none of these is what mathematics becomes
when entering the field of educational practices. A sociological approach ought to be first and
foremost interested in what it is and not in how it ought to be (Davis, 2004).

5 Knowledge is not enough; we need to enjoy!

The papers in this special issue represent only a small part of the broader social turn. We have
today a considerable array of research that shows the role of mathematics and its education in
processes distant from the benevolent idea of the neutrality and power of mathematics. The
fields of ethnomathematics, critical mathematics education and, more generally, what has been
known as the social, cultural and political perspectives in mathematics education have shown
how mathematics is involved in processes of credibilization and social selection (Bishop &
Forgasz, 2007; Stinson, 2004), in excluding groups of people considered to be disadvantaged
(Martin, 2011), in providing a clear social mechanism of accountability (Brown, 2011) or in
fostering the appropriation of behaviours and modes of thinking and acting that make every
child governable (Popkewitz, 2004). These studies compel us to think about the importance of
mathematics, not in terms of mathematical objectsas valuable knowledge and competence
but in terms of the role the mathematical rationality plays in relation to political as well as
economic criteria and goals.
However, we challenge the reader to find a piece of research or a national curriculum where
the importance of school mathematics is articulated, not in terms of its direct characteristics but
in terms of the value it has within the complex universe of socioeconomic relations, a
document saying, for example: mathematics is important because it allows students to
accumulate school credit and achieve higher social positions, mathematics is important
because it gives credibility to the course, mathematics is important because it makes people
governable, or even mathematics is important because it allows reproduction of social
inequalities. Apparently, people know this is the case. Nonetheless, it is never stated explicitly
in public discourse. Officially, the importance of mathematics is stated in terms of knowledge and competence.
When researchers know that mathematics is used as an economic measure (Tsatsaroni &
Evans), a technology of subjectification (Kanes et al.) or as a mechanism of social selection
(Jorgensen et al.) and still insist on the importance of mathematics as a knowledge or
competence, they are performing what iek (2008) calls a fetischistic disavowal: one knows,

Whither social theory?

247

but one does not really believe what one knows, and thus keeps acting as if one does not know.
The attachment to a cause (iek, 1993, p. 202)in our case, the naturalization of the
importance of mathematics in terms of mathematics itselfcannot be reduced to a performative effect of the discursive practices that refer to it. As posited by iek (1993):
The pure discursive effect does not have enough substance to compel the attraction
proper to a Causeand the Lacanian term for the strange substance which must be
added so that a Cause obtains its positive ontological consistency, the only substance
acknowledged by psychoanalysis is of course enjoyment. (p. 202)
What secures a given ideological edifice, what binds us to explicit ideologies, is not so
much a rational decision but a mode of enjoyment. Morgan is well aware of this attachment to
practice when she highlights that although socio-cultural research tends to recognize the
complexity involved in the teaching and learning of mathematics, researchers often disavow
such complexity for the sake of research. The practical demands of research practice end up
prevailing over any knowledge researchers may have.
The crucial question about ideology is thus not to be posited in terms of knowledgewhat
people need to know in order to break the ideological spellbut in terms of enjoyment: what
do people enjoy that prevents them from changing? The attachment to something we know is
wrong can only be explained in terms of enjoyment: after the ideology has been exposed, we
still do not change our behaviour because we enjoy it.
What do researchers enjoy that keeps them attached to the belief that mathematics is
important in itself? As mentioned by Lerman, mathematics has a privileged position in
the eyes of society. There are obvious benefits from the belief that mathematics is
precious knowledge, a keystone of modern society and an inescapable tool for citizenship. This makes mathematics education a privileged area of research among educational
sciences, with all the concomitant benefits of funding, working conditions and possibilities for research. As rightly acknowledged by Kanes et al., even a dreadful instrument
such as PISA can give researchers the opportunity (that is, the funding) to develop
research. To assume that school mathematics is more about credit than about mathematics itself implies questioning the entire discourse sustaining mathematics education
research, thus jeopardizing the central role mathematics has in education, with all the
consequences this will have for our work. We can risk saying that what researchers enjoy
is university credit, an expression more and more in tune with the current functioning of
academic life, where terms such as knowledge production, quotations index and
number of publications dictate the overriding goals of a whole swathe of social,
cultural and intellectual activities that can be understood and valued in other terms.

6 Final remarks
We would like a social approach to mathematics education to be aware of the role
research plays in the constitution of the problems that the same research community so
eagerly tries to address. Such form of reflexivity is not only a matter of improving the
work of teachers and the research community in the shaping of school mathematics
against those who determine pedagogy, curriculum and assessment in mathematics
(Lerman). This is not a struggle between the good guys (teachers, researchers) and the
bad guys (policy makers, governments). It is rather a matter of placing mathematics as a
school subject in the dynamics of the cultural politics of schooling in which we are all
implicated (Valero, Garca, Camelo, Mancera, & Romero, 2012).

248

A. Pais, P. Valero

References
Bishop, A., & Forgasz, H. (2007). Issues in access and equity in mathematics education. In F. Lester (Ed.),
Second handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 11451168). Charlotte, NC:
Information Age.
Brown, T. (2011). Mathematics education and subjectivity: Cultures and cultural renewal. Dordrecht: Springer.
Davis, Z. (2004). The debt to pleasure. The subject and knowledge in pedagogic discourse. In J. Muller, B.
Davies, & A. Morais (Eds.), Reading Bernstein, researching Bernstein (pp. 4457). London: Routledge
Falmer.
Knijnik, G., & Wanderer, F. (2010). Mathematics education and differential inclusion: A study about two
Brazilian timespace forms of life. ZDM, 42(34), 349360.
Lerman, S. (2000). The social turn in mathematics education research. In J. Boaler (Ed.), Multiple perspectives on
mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 1944). Westport USA: Ablex.
Lerman, S. (2006). Cultural psychology, anthropology and sociology: The developing strong social turn. In J.
Maasz & W. Schloeglmann (Eds.), New mathematics education research and practice (pp. 171188).
Rotterdam: Sense.
Lundin, S. (2012). Hating school, loving mathematics: On the ideological function of critique and reform in
mathematics education. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 80(1), 7385.
Martin, D. B. (2011). What does quality mean in the context of white institutional space? In B. Atweh, M.
Graven, W. Secada, & P. Valero (Eds.), Mapping equity and quality in mathematics education (pp. 437
450). New York: Springer.
Pais, A. (2013). An ideology critique of the use-value of mathematics. Educational Studies in Mathematics,
84(1), 1534.
Pais, A., & Valero, P. (2012). Researching research: Mathematics education in the political. Educational Studies
in Mathematics, 80(12), 924.
Popkewitz, T. S. (2004). The alchemy of the mathematics curriculum: Inscriptions and the fabrication of the
child. American Educational Research Journal, 41(1), 334.
Stinson, D. (2004). Mathematics as gate-keeper(?): Three theoretical perspectives that aim toward empowering
all children with a key to the gate. The Mathematics Educator, 14(1), 818.
Valero, P. (2004). Socio-political perspectives on mathematics education. In P. Valero & R. Zevenbergen (Eds.),
Researching the socio-political dimensions of mathematics education: Issues of power in theory and
methodology (pp. 524). Norwell, MA: Kluwer.
Valero, P. (2008). Discourses of power in mathematics education research: Concepts and possibilities for action.
PNA: Revista de Investigacin en Didctica de la Matemtica, 2(2), 4360.
Valero, P., Garca, G., Camelo, F., Mancera, G., & Romero, J. (2012). Mathematics education and the dignity of
being. Pythagoras. Journal of the Association for Mathematics Education of South Africa, 33(2), Art. #171,
171179.
iek, S. (1993). Tarrying with the negative. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
iek, S. (2008). The plague of fantasies [1997] (1st ed.). London: Verso.

Copyright of Educational Studies in Mathematics is the property of Springer Science &

Business Media B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted
to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may
print, download, or email articles for individual use.