Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a panoramic view of education in contemporary South Africa. It describes the setting of the lesson around which the following analyses evolve, the school in which this lesson was taught, the teacher who taught it and the curriculum of which it was a part. The book explores how the idea of doing research in a particular local context was taken seriously in the 5-year research-and-development project in South Africa. That project, called the Wits Maths Connect Secondary (WMCS), was conceived as a response to the growing concern about the actual role of research in countering the legacy of apartheid and in fighting its impact on teaching and learning of mathematics in South African schools. The focus of the project is on specific classes in specific schools and on day-today, classroom activities.