ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews and reflects the development of the Congress of European Research in Mathematics Education (CERME) Thematic Working Group (TWG) on 'Diversity in Mathematics Education'. The centrality of culture in the doing, thinking, learning, and teaching of mathematics has been discussed by many scholars in CERME meetings since they started. Political perspectives may also focus on how diversity among learners has consequences in terms of unequal access to the learning of mathematics. In the social sciences, it is acknowledged that the challenges that social and cultural diversity poses to education have many facets, and these have been studied from different approaches. The multiplicity of understandings of diversity also impacts on the way it has been theorised and analysed by TWG participants. When the group began, the theorising was dominated by approaches drawing on the cultural nature of mathematics, cultural psychology (Cole, 1996), critical mathematical education and ethnomathematics.
