ABSTRACT
The contention that knowing and doing mathematics is an inherently social and cultural activity has gained increasing acceptance in recent years. At least in the United States, this attempt to go beyond purely cognitive analyses reflects a growing disillusionment with mainstream psychology. The sociocultural perspective treats mathematical learning as primarily a process of enculturation wherein students appropriate their intellectual inheritance; that is, the mathematical ways of knowing institutionalized by wider society. The motivation for developing the interpretive framework described was primarily theoretical. Such work does have practical relevance in that analyses of classroom events or of individual students’ mathematical activity typically lead to suggestions for educational improvement. A primary reason for conducting the analysis of the first-grade classroom was to explore ways of accounting for learning as it occurs in the social context of the classroom. This chapter outlines Vygotsky’s key insights, although leaving room for the conception of children as active constructors of their ways of knowing.
