ABSTRACT
Sociocultural context encompasses many interrelated factors: history, politics, ethnic composition, languages, cultural values and ways of life, customs, different gender roles, and others. These factors have different impacts on the nature and practice of mathematics education of a country. One way to study them is to focus on a specific factor in depth, for example, the politics of mathematics education (chap. 6, this volume), the development of a mathematics reform (Ellerton & Clements, 1994; Horwood, 1999), the nature and development of ethnomathematics (Ascher, 1991; Gerdes, 1996; Nelson, Joseph, & Williams, 1993; Nunes, 1993; Nunes & Bryant, 1996; Stillman & Balatti, chap. 18 this volume), gender differences (Rogers & Kaiser, 1995), philosophies of mathematics (Hersh, 1997), or sociological histories of Western and non-Western mathematics (Restivo, 1992). These analyses have produced interesting and useful insights into how various sociocultural factors have affected mathematics education, but there is a need to examine some of these factors at a more systemic level.
