The focus of this paper is the conceptualisation of students in special educationalneeds in mathematics (SEM students) in the research fields of mathematics andspecial education. A difference between fields regarding the perspectives takenon the SEM student is obvious in the reviewed articles. Those in the specialeducational field were individual oriented in their view of the difficulties, whilstreviewed articles from the field of mathematics education more often discusssocio-cultural settings. The content in the selected 28 articles reveals that theoverall conceptualisation of SEM student has to do with the social construct ofthe SEM student, as well as with students’ experiences, affects, andprerequisites; with the specific training methods or interventions applied; withspecial areas in the subject of mathematics; with special groups of students; andwith teachers’ knowledge about all these factors.

This chapter investigates the future shared duties of special education pre-service teachers in mathematics and mathematics pre-service teachers for primary school to support students in need of support in mathematics. Within the Swedish context, teacher education training policy frames special education teachers in mathematics (STms) as the historians of schooling, in that they carry specific knowledge about how students in need of support have been treated earlier, and recognise that current practices and policies have been motivated by the history and culture of Swedish schools. This framing also suggests that they have the expertise in supporting students in need of special support and an understanding of specific disabilities or prerequisites for learning that these students can have. In contrast, mathematics teachers for primary school (MTPs) are framed as being responsible for the overall education taking place in classrooms, being willing to collaborate and learn from other professions involved in the students learning and development, and needing to pay attention to those other professions’ experiences and knowledge. In addition, the teacher education training policy indicates that MTPs are supposed to cooperate, listen, and reflect, whereas STms are to lead, be independent, analyse, and drive school development. Furthermore, the position, role, and authority of STms are not supported by the Swedish Education Act. This together with the sometimes contradictory roles identified by each of the profession’s goals in their degree ordinance could put MTPs’ and STms’ shared duties at risk, and creates a need for negotiation. A possible way forward, in order to counteract this risk, might be shared courses during teacher training. This could presumably prepare for future negotiations and collaborations of roles and responsibilities.

This article builds upon a systematic review of 53 articles in international research journals and makes three main contributions. First, it develops a method for identifying motives, values, and assumptions in research by analysing segments of text in journal articles. Second, it represents a reflective account of research within the field of mathematics education. Third, it captures the ongoing directions of intentionalities inherent in the diverse field of special education mathematics and, thereby, some of the characteristics of the core issues in this field. Three directions of intentionalities were identified: towards teachers and teaching competence, towards enhanced mathematical achievement, and towards every student's learning. The results indicate that each direction has specific limitations and potentials. In order to improve special education mathematics, we recommend that researchers and practitioners remain broadly informed and involved in all three directions of intentionalities.

This study presents a tentative framework for studying the learning of fractions in the context of transformations between different forms of representations. The framework is used in an empirical sample of how eight 10-year-old students express understanding of activities which were developed to challenge them to reflect on different ways of representing aspects of the concept of fractions. The framework is based on a social semiotic perspective of multimodality.

The analysis discloses how the framework helps in structuring our understanding of the interplay between representations in the learning of fractions. Specifically, we saw how concrete physical material and gestures complemented the symbolic and spoken language in the students’ solution strategies of different tasks. 

The focus of this article is on the use of theories and on what we imply when we in research claim to use a theory. In this article, diverse uses of one theory will be illustrated with reference to ten different studies. The aim is not to evaluate or judge how the theory is used in these studies, but to discuss how the diverse uses of one and the same theory may infer very different things in research. Questions are raised about what happens with the hierarchy and the coherence of an argument and what conclusions can be drawn when only some parts of a theory are used.

This research describes how students perceived as being in special educational needs in mathematics (SEM), either as students in access to mathematics, or as students in struggle to get access, are challenged in their participation in mathematics education. Discourse analysis is used as a tool and a theory to construe discourses from students own stories of participation in an inclusive mathematics classroom. Distinguishing between (d)iscourse as stories in texts, and (D)iscourses as social and political recognisable units, the result shows the same, yet different, discourses; tasks, the importance of the teacher, to be (un)valued and math is boring, all indicating a Discourse of accessibility in mathematics education. The accessibility is challenged in two ways, the students are challenged in their participation since they do not fit into the ‘normal’ education, and the mathematics education is challenged to meet every students’ need to promote equity.

How to work inclusively and engage students in special educational needs in the mathematics is a difficult task. In this article, I discuss teachers’ awareness of connections between different teaching and learning situations, and the awareness of connections of content in the teaching as one way of including students who are in special educational needs in mathematics (SEM-students) in the mathematics taught in school. The importance of considering situated knowledge in the teaching of mathematics is highlighted through the notions prepare, immerse and repeat along with an awareness of mathematical tasks and representations. If focusing on how and what to teach in mathematics, the teachers can help the students to recognise similarities in mathematics between different teaching and learning situations, and enhance the inclusion process in the mathematics education.

The overall aim of the present research project is to empirically investigate what inclusion in mathematics education can be and how it is possible to develop inclusive mathematics education, based on special educational needs in mathematics. In this paper, the aim is to present how the impact of the principal affects the development of inclusion in mathematics from a teacher perspective. The study has an ethnographic approach, where a large primary School is being studied.  The results indicate that the principal’s impact on inclusion in mathematics at the realisation arena is relatively weak. In this study, inclusion in mathematics has strong connections with didactical issues.

This paper reports on a study exploring inclusion in mathematics education from a student perspective. The theoretical and analytical approach in the study is discourse analysis. The results presented in this paper are based on 8 interviews with students from lower secondary school and 4 observations of mathematics lessons. The teachers describe the students as students in special needs in mathematics (SEM). The results show that, from a student perspective, the teaching and learning of mathematics in an inclusive classroom is complex and diverse. At the same time, as these students are similar in that they are SEM-students, they are different when it comes to how they themselves want to be included in the mathematics. These differences regard both the organization and the content. Thus, diversity among students demands diversity in the mathematics education. 

This research reports on a study investigating how three students perceived as being in special educational needs in mathematics (SEM), either as students in access to mathematics or as students in struggle to get access, talk about participation in mathematics education. Discourse analysis is used as a theory and a tool to investigate the students’ own stories of learning and teaching in an inclusive mathematics classroom. The results show that students’ participation in mathematics education is influenced by how the mathematics education is set up. That is, how the organisation of the mathematics classroom and students being in a small group influence students’ participation.The results also show that even though the same issues of the organisation influence the three students, there is a diversity within the issues, calling for a critical question, is the inclusive classroom setting really inclusive in terms of participation and access to mathematics?

This literature review focuses on the definitions and roles of inclusion in the field of mathematics education to help promote the sustainable development of inclusion in the discipline. Discourse analysis was used to analyse 76 studies published between 2010 and 2016. The results show that the term inclusion is used both for an ideology and a way of teaching, and these two uses are most often treated separately and independently of each other. When inclusion is treated as an ideology, values are articulated; when treated as a way of teaching, interventions are brought to the fore. When the notion of inclusion is used as an ideology, the most extensive discourse concerns equity in mathematics education; when it is used as a way of teaching, the most extensive discourse relates to teaching interventions for mathematical engagement. Based on the literature review, if sustainable development of inclusion in mathematics education is to be promoted, scholars need to connect and interrelate the operationalisation and meanings of inclusion in both society and in mathematics classrooms, and take students’ voices into consideration in research.

The objective of this paper is to describe the means by which the principal affects the process of inclusion in mathematics from a teacher perspective. Two notions form the theoretical foundation: participation and inclusion. The participatory perspective is provided by Wenger’s theory of communities of practice (1998). When discussing inclusion, Asp-Onsjö’s (2006) notions of didactical, spatial, and social inclusion have been used. The results are presented in two parts: the first presents identified communities at the investigated school and the second identifies codes of impact pointing towards inclusion in mathematics. When combining the participatory and the inclusive perspectives, codes of impact regarding inclusion in mathematics in the different communities were identified. Although there are different codes of impact in the different communities, one can identify several recurring codes when investigating the impact of the principal. The most frequent is courses. Competence, didactical discussions and planning also recur in the different communities. Investigating these codes of impact, there appears to be a gap between the steering of the principal and what actually occurs. The results indicate that the principal’s impact on inclusion in mathematics in the realisation arena is relatively weak.

The aim of this paper is to present a way of understanding the phenomenon of inclusion in mathematics. The theoretical framework consists of the connection between two theoretical perspectives and is tested in an empirical example of inclusive mathematics from the perspective of special education. The theory of communities of practice is used as an overall theoretical perspective along with a theoretical framework regarding inclusion. Sub codes were extracted from the empirical example to create a more fine-grained conceptual framework. The results show that the conceptual structure is beneficial for extracting a fine-grained conceptual tool in understanding and developing inclusion in mathematics.

Inkluderande matematikundervisning – tidiga insatser i FK–6 ­ger teoretiska och didaktiska perspektiv på hur inkludering kan omsättas, såväl ­inom organisationen som i den praktiska matematikundervisningen i klassrummet.

Här får du kunskap om orsaksförklaringar till särskilda utbildningsbehov i matematik (SUM) och om hur kartläggning för att ringa in behov och lämpliga åtgärder kan gå till. Med denna grund ligger fokus sedan på innehåll, planering och utvärdering av undervisningen och frågor som:

• Hur kan gruppindelningar användas på ett inkluderande vis?
• Hur stimuleras elevernas meningsfulla deltagande?
• Hur kan man anpassa undervisningsinnehållet?

This article presents a reflection on what the qualitative interview method conducted with students can provide to (mathematics) education research in terms of in-depth knowledge and what critical methodological points should be taken into consideration. Repeated interviews with the same students in relation to research quality is considered. The argument is that repeated interviews can provide in- depth knowledge and a grasp of students’ understandings. Critical points to consider when gaining in-depth knowledge are person- dependency, process ethics, connections between repeated interviews as a method and the aim, and the re-interview effect. These are important to discuss and reflect on throughout the research process, as they can function as quality criteria when producing in-depth knowledge in qualitative research with repeated interviews.

This study foregrounds three students who are regarded by their teachers as being in special educational needs in mathematics (SEM) and these same students voicing what inclusion in mathematics education means to them. In this study, inclusion is defined as processes of participation. Discourse analysis was applied when analysing these students’ voices of inclusion in mathematics education in two inclusive mathematics classrooms, with both classes aiming to include every student in the mathematics education. The three main Discourses which were identified were the Discourse of assessment, the Discourse of being in a mathematics classroom setting, and the Discourse of accessibility in mathematics education. The analysis of the Discourses indicates that they were affected by wider sociopolitical discourses. Furthermore, when inclusion is regarded as processes of participation in mathematics education, the results indicate that participation becomes more complex. Therefore, in this process, both ideological and societal issues, as well as individual and subject-specific issues, must be considered in the educational endeavour. © 2023, The Author(s).

In this study Swedish school regulations are investigated concerning inclusion and mathematics education. The texts are seen as socially produced written language. Discourse analysis is used focusing social interaction in the texts. The research question is, what in the regulation texts denotes and connotes inclusion, and how does this influence and govern inclusion in the case of mathematics education? Four Discourses were construed: the discourses of democracy and citizenship, of equity, of possibilities for participation and access, and of knowledge and assessment in mathematics. These Discourses make governing functions of inclusion visible. The functions are mostly ideological, and there appears to be a gap to how to actually do inclusion in the education. How this gap can be bridged needs to be considered by principals and teachers in their work for inclusion. Also, there are contradictions in the regulations. This implies that how in(ex)clusion in mathematics education is produced needs to be reconsidered by policy makers.

The empirical material and results presented in this paper come from an ongoing ethnography-inspired study of inclusion in mathematics as seen from a student perspective. This study did not initially focus on assessment, but when investigating what influences students’ experiences of school mathematics, assessment came out as a result. The research participants are not ordinary students, but students who need some degree of special education in mathematics, either as gifted or as low-performing students. For these students, traditional assessment in mathematics does not provide any relevant feedback to support them. On the whole, assessment primarily influences either how they write solutions to tasks, but not exactly how they solve them, or else how they feel about themselves as low performers in mathematics.

This thesis contributes to research and practice within the field of special education in mathematics with more knowledge about, and an understanding of, students´ meaning(s) of inclusion in mathematics education. Three research questions guide the study: What meaning(s) is/are ascribed, and how is inclusion used, in mathematics education research? What meaning(s) do the students ascribe to inclusion in mathematics learning and teaching? And what frames students´ meaning(s) of inclusion in mathematics learning and teaching?The first part of this study began with a systematic literature review on the notion of inclusion in mathematics education research, and the search resulted in 1,296 research studies. Of these, 76 studies were retained after the criteria for time span and peer-reviewed research were applied and 19 duplicates had been removed. The second part of the study involves a case study of three students and their meaning(s) of inclusion in mathematics education. The selected school was a lower secondary school in an urban area of Sweden. The school had set out to work inclusively, meaning their aims were to include all students in the ordinary classroom teaching in every subject and to incorporate special education into the ordinary teaching with no fixed special education groups. Three students were chosen for this part of the study: one in Grade 7 and two in Grade 8. Edward, one of the students in Grade 8, was chosen because he was thought to be a student in access to mathematics education. The other two students were chosen because they were thought to be struggling to gain access to mathematics education: Veronica in Grade 7 and Ronaldo in Grade 8 (the same class as Edward). In this study, the object of the study is the meaning(s) of inclusion in student talk. This study is an instrumental and collective case (Stake, 1995), as it involves several students’ meaning(s) aimed at developing a more general understanding of inclusion in mathematics education. The case is also an information-rich case (Patton, 2002), with contributions from students in mathematics education at an inclusive school. Applying Flyvbjerg’s (2006; 2011) notions, one can also call this kind of selection “information-oriented”, and the case is an extreme one – a choice made in order to get “a best case scenario”. An extreme case is a case used to “obtain information on unusual cases  which can be especially problematic or especially good in a more closely defined sense” (Flyvbjerg, 2011, p. 307). The data in this study consists of both observations and interviews conducted during the spring semester 2016. The observations took place in a Grade 7 and Grade 8 classroom at the same school where the interviewed students were enrolled. At least one mathematics lesson each month for each class was observed, and student interviews followed each observation. The observations were used to provide a context for the interviews and to support the analysis. In this study, discourse analysis (DA) as described by Gee (2014a; 2014b) was chosen as both the theoretical frame and as an analytical tool because of its explanatory view on discourse, with description foregrounded. With the help of DA, this study describes both the meaning(s) and the use of the notion of inclusion in mathematics education research. It also describes students’ meaning(s) of inclusion in mathematics education as well as framing issues in student talk of inclusion in mathematics education. From Gee´s point of view, DA encompasses all forms of interaction, both spoken and written, and he provides a toolkit for analysing such interaction by posing questions to the text. Gee distinguishes two theoretical notions, big and small discourses, henceforth referred to as Discourse (D) and discourse (d). Discourse represents a wider context, both social and political, and is constructed upon ways of saying, doing, and being: “If you put language, action, interaction, values, beliefs, symbols, objects, tools, and places together in such a way that other recognize you as a particular type of who (identity) engaged in a particular type of what (activity), here and now, then you have pulled of a Discourse” (Gee, 2014 a, p. 52, Gee’s italics). When looking at discourse (with a small d), it focuses on language in use – the “stretches of language” we can see in the conversations we investigate (Gee, 2014a, 2014b), meaning the relations between words and sentences and how these relations visualize the themes within the conversations. These small discourses can inform on how the language is used, what typical words and themes are visible, and how the speakers or writers design the language. According to Gee (2015), big Discourse sets a larger context for the analysis of small discourse. The results of the first part of the study answer to the research question, What meaning(s) is ascribed, and how is inclusion used in mathematics education research? They show that research on inclusion in mathematics education use the term inclusion when both referring to an ideology and a way of teaching, although these two uses are usually treated separately and independently of each other. The results of the second part of the study answer to the following research questions: What meaning(s) do the students ascribe to inclusion in mathematics learning and teaching? And what frames students´ meaning(s) of inclusion in mathematics learning and teaching? These questions show how meaning(s) of inclusion in student talk can be described by three overarching Discourses: the Discourse of mathematics classroom setting, of assessment, and of accessibility in mathematics education. Within these Discourses, smaller discourses make issues of meanings of inclusion for the students visible in terms of: testing, grades, tasks, the importance of the teacher, (not) being valued, the dislike of mathematics, the classroom organization, and being in a small group. This study shows the complexities and challenges of teaching mathematics, all while simultaneously handling students’ diversity and promoting the mathematical development of each student. To enhance students’ participation and access demands that the teacher knows her or his students, is flexible, has a pedagogical stance and tactfulness, and is knowledgeable in mathematics and mathematics education. It also demands that the teacher is able to take a critical stance and resist the prevailing discourse of assessment that can sometimes overshadow the mathematics education, and in a sense, almost become mathematics for the students. Furthermore, this study also shows how complex and challenging it is to be a mathematics student: they are required to relate to, understand, and participate in many Discourses existing at the same time in a single mathematics classroom. These Discourses interrelate and are embedded in power relations between students and teachers and institutions. This demands that the students are alert and able to use various symbols and objects as well as recognize patterns, and then act accordingly. Hence, to be able to fully participate, you have to be able to talk the talk and walk the walk (Gee, 2014a). This means that not only do you have to use the language correctly, but also you have to act properly at the right time and place.

This paper aims to develop a methodology to explore the politics of meaning in special education mathematics research. Mediated meaning, directions of intentionalities and perspectives on special education have been analysed in eight reviewed articles. Results indicate that the politics of meaning in the Nordic sample are about processes of normalisation and effectiveness through methods and approaches. The teacher is emphasised as the centre for change and development also when it comes to organi-sational factors. Disabilities are not researched, perhaps cloaked by an overall rela-tional approach or due to research paying attention to milder difficulties. The deve- loped methodology seems to be fruitful and will be applied on a broader interna-tional sample.

This study presents a tentative framework for the study of learning fractions in the context of transformations between different forms of representations. The framework is used in an empirical sample of how eight 10-year-old students express understanding of mathematics tasks, which were developed to challenge them to reflect on different ways to represent aspects of the concept of fractions. The framework is based on a social semiotic perspective of multimodality. The analysis discloses how the framework helps in structuring understanding of the interplay between representations in the learning of fractions. Specifically we saw how concrete physical material and gestures complemented the symbolic and spoken language in the students’ solution strategies of different tasks.

 Teacher education of SEN looks different over the globe. This paper discusses the notion of SEN in the light of Swedish teacher education of SEN at Linnaeus University. An analysis of institutional documents governing the education has been made. The results show that SEN is expressed in different ways in the documents and is very much connected to needs in the education. It also shows, even though the directions has different target groups, that the notion of SEN has a common basis in facing the needs of all children and students. The differences can be seen in what kind of mission the teacher of SEN has. The results show that the mission of the special pedagogue is more on an overall level and the mission of special teachers is more connected to the learning of the individual child, even though both of the SEN teachers have much the same mission.

Skolans uppdrag är att erbjuda likvärdig utbildning till varje elev med utgångspunkt från deras varierande förutsättningar. Uppdraget, kan benämnas som det dubbla uppdraget, omfattar såväl kunskapsuppdrag som socialisationsuppdrag. I ett flertal rapporter från bl.a. Skolverket och Skolinspektionen (Skolverket, 2011, 2015; Skolinspektionen, 2014, 2016) framgår det att det finns en diskrepans mellan formuleringar i statliga styrdokument och det som sker i skolan med avseende på varje elevs möjlighet till likvärdig utbildning. Villkor för att genomföra skolans dubbla uppdrag belyses i denna artikel genom att fokusera på betydelsen av kvalitén på det didaktiska mötet i relation till varje elevs rätt till likvärdig utbildning och livslång lust att lära. Syftet med artikeln är att skapa en modell för att kunna analysera kvaliteten på det didaktiska mötet. Denna modell innehåller tre komponenter; elevers varierande förutsättningar i relation till likvärdig utbildning, professionell kompetens att genomföra innehålls-, dynamisk och deltagande inkludering samt tolkning och genomförande av skolans dubbla uppdrag. Kvaliteten på det didaktiska mötet påverkas av hur dessa tre komponenter samvarierar med varandra.

en undervisning som är inkluderande betraktas olikheter som tillgångar och alla elever ges möjligheter att vara aktiva. Här beskriver författarna ett examensarbete, på speciallärarprogrammet, om strukturerad intensivundervisning där utgångspunkten var att alla elever skulle arbeta i klassrummet.

The social learning theory of communities of practice is frequently used in mathematics education research. However, we have come to recognise that the theory is used in diverse ways, regarding both the parts that are used and the ways in which those parts are used. This paper presents an overview of this diverse use of the theory based on three themes: Are communities of practice viewed as pre-existing or are they designed within the study? Are individuals or groups foregrounded in the study? Which parts of the theory are mainly used? The aim of the paper is twofold: to make visible the diverse possibilities within one single theory, and to make visible how, even though we might think we know what a theory implies in research, if we look beneath the surface we may find that “the same” theory can imply many different things.