Negotiating Sociocultural Discourses: The Counter-Storytelling of Academically and Mathematically Successful African American Male Students

In the past decade or so, there has been a growing number of scholars who have extended the focus of mathematics education research into the sociocultural and sociohistorical arenas to more fully understand the mathematics schooling experiences of students (see, e.g., Atweh, Forgasz, & Nebres, 2001; Boaler, 2000; Burton, 2003; Martin, 2007; Nasir & Cobb, 2007; Powell & Frankenstein, 1997; Secada, Fennema, & Adajian, 1995; Walshaw, 2004). Lerman (2000) coined this extension the “social turn in mathematics education research” (p. 23). Yet, in making the social turn, he cautioned that the greatest challenge for mathematics education researchers will be to “develop accounts that bring together agency, individual trajectories (Apple, 1991), and the cultural, historical, and social origins of the ways people think, behave, reason, and understand the world” (p. 36).