Teaching mathematics in/for new times: A poststructuralist analysis of the productive quality of the pedagogic process

Mathematics educators and researchers generally recognise the importance of students' active involvement in learning processes; this active engagement is positively thought of in relation to the development of understanding and the construction of mathematical knowledge. However, it is often not well understood, nor perhaps even considered, how engagement in these learning processes also produces the learner and his/her feelings of competence and confidence in/with mathematics. In this paper I undertake, from a post structuralist perspective, a meta-analysis of two short episodes from a paper by Manouchehri and Goodman (2000). I use these interactions to explore (a) how mathematical knowledge and identities are produced in teaching/learning interactions in the classroom and (b) the wider practical implications of this productive power ofprocess for mathematics education and research. Through analyses such as these it may be possible to breathe new life and purpose into mathematics education in the twenty-first century; not by negating what has come before, but in moving on to explore the exciting possibilities that present themselves when taken-for-granted assumptions of a rational, freely choosing proficient (NCTM, 2000) humanist subject are interrupted and revised.This revised version was published online in October 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.