ABSTRACT
Introduction Sociological approaches to assessment have taken a variety of forms. Broadly macro-structural perspectives have focused on the relations between the criteria for assessment, social selection and the wider socio-economic context (for example, Bowles and Gintis 1976). Broadly micro-structural perspectives have focused instead on the ways in which assessment outcomes are constructed within classrooms or testing contexts (for example, Mehan 1973; Newman et al. 1989). Both of these approaches have produced important contributions to our understanding of the origins, the practice and the consequences of assessment. Notwithstanding their different emphases these authors have had many useful things to say about the relations between social structure, culture and the processes of meaning construction in the contexts in which assessment actually occurs. Bourdieu’s work (for example, Bourdieu 1974) on the nature of assessment practices in French higher education serves as an early example of work of this type. Turning to maths education, there has been a considerable body of research in recent years focussing on the ways in which the contexts within which mathematical problem solving occurs can affect radically both the processes and the products of such cognitive activity (Nunes et al. 1993; Lave 1988). In parallel, there has also been much research on children’s ‘failure’ to take a ‘realistic’ perspective during mathematical problem-solving when it would seem appropriate to do so (for example, Säljö 1991). Our recent research on maths assessment, on which we will draw here, is intended as a contribution to these relational and contextual approaches to the study of assessment in maths (for example, Cooper 1998b; Cooper and Dunne 2000; Dunne, 1994).
