ABSTRACT
Over the years I spent studying Amber Hill's mathematics department, I recorded hundreds of observations, interviewed many different students (some successful, some not), and analyzed hundreds of responses to questionnaires and assessments. In presenting this chapter, which is intended to summarize the approach at Amber Hill, I have had to draw from the broader data set and make many choices along the way (Peshkin, 2001). It is likely that other researchers would have made other choices, but part of the ethical responsibility I maintain as a researcher is to portray data honestly and openly. I have therefore chosen data carefully, in consultation with others who read the data, to be representative and not distort the events that transpired at Amber Hill school. I triangulated data so that all of the conjectures and conclusions that follow are supported by at least two, usually three or more, data sources. Other researchers may have recorded or chosen different examples and noticed different events in the classrooms, but I am confident that they would have communicated a similar sense of the teaching and learning at Amber Hill. When the school underwent an official inspection as part of the National inspection service that all schools go through in England, the report raised many of the same issues that I highlight in the pages that follow.
