The implications of mathematics teachers' identities and official mathematics discourses for democratic access to mathematics

This study focuses on the attitudes of a sample of Grade 9 mathematics teachers to the national mathematics Common Task Assessment (CTA) 2002 and to the official mathematics curriculum policy. The notion of pedagogic identity provided the theoretical lens to frame the study. These teachers' personal pedagogic identities are compared with official pedagogic identities constructed by curriculum policy and by the CTA. Data analysis revealed significant tension between personal and official pedagogic identities. Teachers' strong discipline-centred retrospective identities based on pure, mathematical knowledge and skills for epistemological access to the discipline, were at odds with official expectations of them as prospective identities. Teachers identify with an absolutist philosophy, purist ideology, old humanism and popular but negative images of mathematics. Furthermore, faced with the lack of official support for meaningful implementation of the new forms of knowledge and contradictory official regulation, teachers justified their teaching of formal, pure mathematical knowledge and skills on the basis of the demands of the high-stakes matric examination. These teachers experienced much cognitive dissonance and frustration and rejected, resisted or superficially complied with official expectations of them. The implications of the incongruence between official and personal pedagogic identities and contradictions within the official recontextualising field for democratic access to mathematics are raised.