Why the (social) class you are in still counts

Peter Gates
University of Nottingham

If you knew that something in young people’s diets caused them to experience anxiety, made
them feel bad about themselves, reduced their academic achievement, limited their
concentration span, then there would surely be a widespread call to restrict it. It might be sugar,
hydrogenated trans fats, salt, food additives. So why is there not an outcry against one everyday
school practice which causes children to experience each of those responses? Ability segregation,
setting, tracking, call it what you will, causes symbolic violence and abuse to children up and
down the country – and around the world – on a daily basis. Yet we turn a blind eye; why is
that? Well I am not usually one for conspiracy theories, but it is a conspiracy. Why does the
educational establishment keep relatively quiet about it? Because we are part of that conspiracy,
and we do relatively well out of it - well paid jobs, pensions, international travel, kudos, …. A
recent analysis by Archer et al. (2018) provides us with a clear and detailed account of the
processes by which the educational segregation that discriminates against working class young
people becomes represented (or rather ‘misrecognised’) as both natural and normal but also
…how can it be other? The data and thus the analysis, comes from the UK, yet, we are not alone.
Our education system is riven with notions of social class and in this chapter, I take a look at
class and its influence on the mathematics classroom, principally in the UK – and possibly the
USA and Australia.
So how does, what on the surface appears to be an administrative and pedagogic decision about
the organisation of teaching groups, turn into a process of social class reproduction? Those of
us whose politics and professional ideology sit comfortably within a social justice framework,
(and especially those of us on the Marxist left) have no problem with the notion of class. It is
after all the most defining characteristic that influences attainment, achievement and
engagement in schooling, at least in the UK – and I suspect also in other similarly capitalistic
societies. The specific definition of social class may have changed since the 1840s due to changes
in the structural basis of the economy, but what hasn’t changed is the nature of social inequity,
and domination by a social, political and economic élite. Postmodern approaches have attempted
to silence the politics of class, yet, like Marx, it refuses to go away. Rightfully, as the late Geoff
Whitty reminds us:
The mere fact that class does not explain all can be used as an excuse the deny its
power. This would be a serious error. Class is of course an analytic construct as well
as a set of relations, that have an existence outside of our minds. …It would be wrong
to assume that, since many people do not identify with or act on what we might
expect from theories that link, say, identity and ideology with one’s class position,
this means class has gone away. (Whitty, 2002, p. 69)
One feature of the failure of many learners to achieve after years of schooling, is the observation
that school achievement is not equitably spread throughout society; children from less affluent
homes do disproportionately worse than those bought up in relative affluence (Whitty & Anders,
2014). Such children are at risk of sustaining a weak conceptual grasp of mathematical and
scientific concepts and in numerical procedures, which hold them back from developing a more
sophisticated understanding of STEM subjects (Hoadley, 2007; Oakes, 1985, 1990). This in turn
closes off pathways to many careers and professions, but worse, develops into anxiety and
rejection of mathematics in particular, contributing instead to an identity of “I just can’t do
maths” (Gates, 2001). Whilst much research has attempted to articulate this relationship, much
research has simply ignored it, either through denial, or in the belief that by providing good
research all will benefit through the “trickle down” principle. The denial may even be part of the
conspiracy, but it is a political act. Indeed, an early finding from the ICAAMS study
(http://iccams-maths.org/) is that over 30 years:
attainment has not changed very much [..]. The general trend is for results to
be somewhat lower than in the 1970s, although there are some exceptions to
this. (Hodgen et al., 2010, p. 8)
By ignoring this critical feature of learners, we appear to have made little improvement in
learning – according to ICAAMS at least. There is also some doubt that the improvements in
levels of achievement in mathematics and science in the UK, trumpeted by successive
Governments have in reality been that real (Dickinson et al., 2010) and undoubtedly the same
holds true in other countries. So, instead of trying to do the same old thing better, maybe it is
time to think anew.
My own contact with schools and teachers over 40 years suggests that each academic year, the
prospect of yet again teaching fractions to a class of low achieving challenging adolescents
strikes abject frustration into mathematics teachers throughout the world. Yet the reality is that
many young people fail to understand even basic mathematics after a decade of schooling. How
we get to this position where, after 9-10 years of compulsory education, we are still trying to
convince some children that 1/4 = 2/8 is nothing short of an international scandal. Worryingly,
this is after decades of curriculum reviews, policy changes and millions spent on research.
Children do not start school – or life - on an equal footing. It is well known in an extensive
literature that there is a significant difference in the levels of achievement of children from
different social backgrounds (or social classes), and these early differences expand during the
course of compulsory schooling (Clifton & Cook, 2012). So, whilst children start school with
differential levels of achievement, these gaps increase, rather than decrease during schooling,
suggesting schooling does not mitigate against these social advantages, but contribute to their
deepening. More specifically, the influence of family and parental wealth upon educational
attainment and post-school employment is particularly strong (Jerrim & Macmillan, 2015).
So, how does class play out? I will argue that it does so by successfully hiding the discrimination
and thereby creating a very effective mechanism. Its greatest effectiveness lies in its invisibility
and the presentation of normality and of necessity. Alexandre Pais argues very strongly that the
equity and “mathematics for all” discourse is a sham; we live in a society where in order for
some to succeed, many others have to fail.
In the example of “mathematics for all”, this official claim conceals the obscenity of
a school system that year after year throws thousands of people into the garbage bin
of society under the official discourse of an inclusionary and democratic school. […]
The antagonistic character of social reality – the crude reality that in order for some
to succeed others have to fail – is the necessary real which needs to be concealed so
that the illusion of social cohesion can be kept. (Pais, 2012, p. 58)
Those who stand to gain by this, cannot allow serendipity to organise failure, or, well, it might
end up being random and equitably spread throughout society and that won’t do. So, those in
power activate several class weapons in this process – curriculum, pupil organisation, pedagogy,
to mention just three of the of the most significant factors in structuring pupil experience. In
addition, the mode of communication, specifically the use of use of verbal and literal rather than
visual forms of instruction, serve to further exacerbate class divisions (Gates, 2015, 2018).

Curriculum
The first strategy is to create alienation through the curriculum. The curriculum becomes an
object that is “alien” to, or outside of, the pupil. Marx sees alienation as a key component in an
exploitative economy meaning it becomes:
an object, an external existence. But that it exists outside of him, independently as
something alien and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him. (Marx,
1844, p. 272)
Whilst Marx is referring to economic labour, exactly the same process relates to educational
labour; young people engaging in tasks in the classroom. Whereas some have a personal
investment in the certification the curriculum brings for future advancement, others sit outside
that – the losers as Pais calls them - there to ensure the winners win.
Government-controlled curricula in the UK and elsewhere, presents largely decontextualized
(alienated) skills, devoid of any particular rationale; why do you complete the square? This is as
true today as it was nearly 40 years ago:

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 Mathematics lessons in secondary schools are very often not about anything. You
collect like terms, or learn the laws of indices, with no perception of why anyone
needs to do such things. There is excessive preoccupation with a sequence of skills
and quite inadequate opportunity to see the skills emerging from the solution of
problems. As a consequence of this approach, school mathematics contains very little
incidental information. A French lesson might well contain incidental information
about France — so on across the curriculum; but in mathematics the incidental
information which one might expect (current exchange and interest rates; general
knowledge on climate, communications and geography; the rules and scoring
systems of games; social statistics) is rarely there, because most teachers in no way
see this as part of their responsibility when teaching mathematics. (Cockcroft, 1982,
p. 141 Para 462).
Alternative approaches to the mainstream “about nothing at all” remain just that – alternative.
Using mathematics in a creative and critical way rarely gains official legitimacy, not because it
is explicitly banned, but because the system operates to marginalize such approaches placing
them outside the accountability mechanisms set up to maintain control. Eric Gutstein provides
one such approach where mathematics can be used to help students investigate, critique and
subsequently oppose injustice and oppression (Gutstein, 2006), yet the prospect of such ideas
influencing mathematics teaching more widely seems remote.
Children from disadvantaged backgrounds have forms of knowledge that do not allow them to
fit so well into the expectations of schools as do those from more affluent or middle-class homes
(Zevenbergen, 2000). Whilst this seems to be true generally, there seems to be specific
differences in learning of mathematics (Case, Griffin, & Kelly, 1999) where the most significant
and consistent predictor of academic achievement in school seems to be the parental income,
which has an effect stronger even than parental educational background. Where ethnicity and
gender are factors, they are usually confounded with socio-economic status (SES) (Jordan,
Huttenlocher, & Levine, 1992, p. 652); in the first two years of formal education, school makes
little difference to this (Stipek & Ryan, 1997, p. 721). Yet one major impediment to the
amelioration of mathematics teaching and learning around the world is that much work in
mathematics education is so politically focused as to ignore the social class basis of mathematics
learning. Whilst this is lamentable, it is not surprising; indeed, it would be surprising if the field
of mathematics education were quarantined from the left-right/radical-conservative dispositions
that exist everywhere else.
Marilyn Frankenstein from the USA makes a quite radical suggestion …
Traditional mathematics education supports the hegemonic ideologies of society […]
Even trivial math applications like totalling grocery bills carry the ideological message
that paying for food is natural and that society can only be organized in such a way
that people buy food from grocery stores. (Frankenstein, 1983, p. 328)
Making mathematics relevant, is also taken to mean making it real. So, let us explore the real
world for a moment – best buys. In a national supermarket chain when I was writing this chapter
I found the following:
Kellogg’s Cornflakes 790g – £2.52 (32p/100g)
Kellogg’s Cornflakes 450g - £1.80 (40p/100g)
So, who pays more for their food, and why? At least one supermarket knows the answer to this:
Today, research reveals that the UK’s lowest income homes are being forced to spend
a disproportionate amount of their weekly expenditure on food shopping. The average
household in the UK spends 11 per cent of its weekly expenditure on food. However,
20 per cent of households (those on lower incomes) are actually forced to spend
proportionately at least 30 per cent more of their current weekly food spend than the
national average. (Morrissons, 2012)

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So those who can only afford to buy less, pay more; surely a much more important issue than
“which is cheapest”? Is this fair? Certainly not, and the increasing levels of food poverty in the
UK under the right-wing Conservative Government between 2010 and 2018 have been shocking.
Whilst the level of food poverty is worrying enough, what is of greater concern is the
exponential growth in the numbers of people across the UK who are experiencing
real hunger and hardship. Perhaps the most extreme manifestation of food poverty
is the rising number of people who depend on emergency food aid. (Cooper &
Dumpleton, 2013)
There is data out there to allow mathematics lessons to be about something important. However,
the politicization of the curriculum makes such a critical stance alien to mainstream mathematics
education in schools. Oh, you cannot raise that, it is political. Ideological. Brainwashing. Yet as
Ole Skovsmose argues, mathematics teachers work within a larger political framework:
Whatever the mathematics teachers try to do, it will be done within the overall socio-
economic and political formation of society. As the function of mathematics education
is determined by this formation, any claimed educational improvements at the micro
level will be illusory. As a consequence, it does not make sense to talk about
improvements in the mathematical classroom unless one changes society.
Conditioned essentialism is an axiomatic element of the classic Marxist outlook. The
capitalist order of things is a determining structure, which conditions what is possible
and what is not possible to do. (Skovsmose, in press)
So, what we teach and how we teach it is critical to the maintenance of the dominant social
forces, but that is not sufficient on its own, we need to structure the experience so that the
alienation can be best directed through structured grouping practices.

Pupil Organization
I opened this chapter by presenting “ability segregation” as a key mechanism, which operates
very effectively and secretly by constructing a notion of the ‘naturalness’ of elitist educational
segregation which goes on to “play a key role in maintaining the status quo in England with
regard to the pervasiveness of setting” (Archer et al., 2018, p. 121; see also Francis et al.,
2016). Whether one should use “ability” or “attainment” here is a moot point. The very usage of
“ability” has a tendency to concretise pupils’ achievement; whereas “attainment” pushes our
attention onto a more fluid claim. Yet while researchers and the sceptics might insist on using
“attainment”, many schools and the teaching profession hang on to “ability” for very purposeful
reasons; pupils need to be selected, labelled and segregated. Whatever term we use, the
research on pupil grouping is fairly clear: the educational effect of grouping by attainment is
insignificant, but has a negative influence on those pupls placed in lower groups (Archer et al.,
2018; Francis et al., 2016). I will not explore the arguments here, it is not needed as it is all so
well laid out in an extensive literature. The most criticial issue for me here is that such grouping
of pupils has in the UK become hegemonic – the ruling and dominant ideology. Yet as with all
forms of hegermony, it is a system of ideas and associated practices which serve the need to
achieve a specific form of domination. It is not necessary for mathematics teachers to realise
this, or to cynically operate a system in order to segregate poorer pupils. Indeed, it is better
they do not know so it can be more easily hidden. So it becomes perpetrated as a universal;
how can it be otherwise? Well it can be, and indeed is, otherwise.
In Sweden ability grouping is illegal because it is known to produce inequities. In the
USA parents have brought law-suits against school districts that have denied high
level curricula to students at high school age; the idea that such selectivity in
‘opportunity to learn’ (Porter, 1994) could happen at elementary school is
inconceivable for most Americans. In Japan (Yiu, 2001) students are believed to have
equal potential and the aim of schools is to encourage students to attain at equally
high levels. Japanese educators are bemused by the Western goal of sorting students
into high and low ‘abilities’. (Boaler, 2005, p. 136)

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This is not to suggest that each of these countries are free of the segregation by social class we
see in the UK, it just plays out differently. However, it is not just played out through the forms
of organisation but also through the pedagogy adopted.

Pedagogy
Sarah Lubienski studied the mathematical experiences of pupils with an eye to looking at pupils’
backgrounds (Lubienski, 2000a, 2000b, 2007). Whilst she naturally expected to find SES
differences, what she actually found were very specific differences in two main areas – whole
class discussion and open-ended problem solving. These are two well-researched pedagogical
strategies and classroom practices which at least in professional discourse are held in some
esteem. Discussion based activities were perceived differently by pupils from different social
backgrounds. High SES pupils thought discussion activities were for them to analyze different
ideas whilst low SES pupils thought it was about getting right answers. The two groups had
different levels of confidence in their own type of contributions with the low SES pupils wanting
more teacher direction. Higher SES pupils felt they could sort things out for themselves – as
their parents do in life presumably. I suspect this is not an uncommon feature of many schools
but where does it emanate? Here then social class is a key determining characteristic largely
absent from much literature on discussion-based mathematics.
A second area where Lubienski noted differences was that of open-ended problem solving. The
high level of ambiguity in such problems caused frustration in low SES pupils which in turn
caused them to give up. High SES pupils just thought harder and engaged more deeply. It is
well known that middle class pupils come to school armed with a set of dispositions and forms
of language which gives them an advantage because these dispositions and language use are
exactly the behaviours that schools and teachers are expecting and prioritise (Zevenbergen,
2000). High SES pupils have a level of self-confidence very common in middle class discourses
whilst working class discourses tend to be located in more subservient dependency modes,
accepting conformity and obedience (Jorgensen, Gates, & Roper, 2014).
Middle class pupils after all tend to live in families where there is more independence, more
autonomy and creativity (Kohn, 1983). Studies of parenting suggest different strategies are used
in different class background. Low SES, working class parents are more directive, requiring more
obedience. Middle class parents tend to be more suggestive and accommodating reason and
discussion (Lareau, 2003). The middle classes grow up to expect and feel superior with more
control over their lives.
Crucial to understanding the influence of class of learning though is specifying the types of
mathematical knowledge on which the discrepancy is present (Siegler & Ramani, 2009). On
nonverbal numerical tasks, preschoolers’ performance does not vary significantly with economic
background (Ginsburg & Russell, 1981; Jordan et al., 1992; Jordan, Levine, & Huttenlocher,
1994). However, on tasks with verbally stated or written numerals, the knowledge of
preschoolers and kindergartners from low-income families lags far behind that of peers from
more affluent families. The differences are seen on a wide range of tasks: recognizing written
numerals, reciting the counting string, counting sets of objects, counting up or down from a
given number other than 1, adding and subtracting, and comparing numerical magnitudes (See
Alexander & Entwisle, 1988; Geary, 1994, 2006; Ginsburg & Russell, 1981; Griffin, Case, &
Siegler, 1994; Jordan et al., 1992; Jordan, Kaplan, Olah, & Locuniak, 2006; Siegler & Ramani,
2009; Starkey, Klein, & Wakeley, 2004; Stipek & Ryan, 1997).
Significant is the argument that the problem lies deep within the way in which schools divorce
children from the informal intuitive forms of understanding they had experienced before
formalized education. Ginsburg and Russell (1981) investigated the associations of social class
and race with early mathematical thinking arguing that early mathematical thought develops in
a robust fashion regardless of social class and race and that school failure, specifically in
mathematics cannot be explained by initial cognitive deficits (p. 56) a finding in conflict with
many early years teachers’ beliefs. However, Ginsburg and Russell (1981) argue that it was
cognitive competence not a cognitive deficiency that might be in existence. Specifically, low-
income children seemed to have a less developed set of what Case and Griffin call “central
conceptual structures” (Case & Griffin, 1990a, 1990b) that went on to underpin future cognitive

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development specifically of mathematical and numerical processes (Griffin et al., 1994, p. 36),
that without these detailed structures early on, children would go on to develop a “rote” approach
to learning which would limit the scope of their level of achievement (p. 47). However, through
a taught “RightStart” programme focusing on conceptual bridging, multiple representation and
affective engagement, Griffin et al. (1994) were able to demonstrate elimination of differences.
The importance of looking at the competencies of children very early on is the more significant
neurological influence of the developing brain, since
children’s early mathematical capacities show a considerable degree of differentiation
by social class during the years when the neurological circuitry on which they depend
is showing its most rapid development (Case et al., 1999, p. 148)
Case et al. go on to argue that whilst SES differences are not observable at birth they do begin
to appear around 3 years old (see also Ginsburg & Russell, 1981), but by kindergarten this had
become a year and a half difference in capabilities (Case et al., 1999, p. 131). These early
differences in mathematical knowledge have lasting effect as preschoolers’ performance on tests
of mathematical is predictive of mathematical achievement at age 8, 10 and 14 and even in later
in upper secondary school (Duncan et al., 2007; Stevenson & Newman, 1986). This stability of
individual differences in mathematical knowledge reflects to some extent the usual positive
relationship between early and later knowledge, but the stability of individual differences in
mathematics is unusually great. This might be because mathematics is something of a secret
garden, avoided by low SES parents (Siegler & Ramani, 2009):
Observations of homes and preschools, as well as the self-reports of teachers and
parents, suggest that the home and preschool environments provide children with
relatively little experience where their attention is focused on mathematics, far less
than literacy-oriented experience (Siegler & Ramani, 2009, p. 558)
It must be no surprise then that the UK Conservative government from 2010 destroyed
“Surestart” children’s centres that had been a model policy for social inclusion of the 1997-2010
Labour Party governments.

Verbal and visual

For most pupils, skill at visualization is not instinctive but “one learns to 'see'” (Whiteley, 2000
p. 4) though we might observe in many mathematics classroom pupils learning to repeat or
learning to say. However, there is some evidence, that social class effects upon the development
of mathematical skills is more marked for verbal than non-verbal forms (Jordan et al., 1992).
Children from middle-income families do better when the mode of representation is verbal. Yet
where the mode of representation is visual or nonverbal, the social class gap is much reduced
possibly because verbal and written forms of communication are less prioritized in working class
families. Alternatively, for working class families “knowledge that has been constructed directly
from their own actions on objects as well as their observations of the world” applies equally to
development of visual and nonverbal modes (Jordan et al., 1992, p. 651).
A study by Mayer (1997) suggested that learners with low prior knowledge (or “low domain
knowledge”) might be particularly supported by visual models and these are likely to be those
very pupils from less affluent backgrounds.
Students who possess high levels of prior knowledge will be more likely than low prior
knowledge learners to create their own mental images as the verbal explanation is
presented and thus to build connections between verbal and visual representations.
In contrast, students who lack prior knowledge will be less likely than high prior
knowledge learners to independently create useful mental images solely from the
verbal materials. Thus, low prior knowledge learners are more likely than high prior
knowledge learners to benefit from the contiguous presentation of verbal and visual
explanations. (Mayer, 1997, p. 15)
Mayer takes this further looking at those learners identified as “poor readers”, who may be so
because of an imbalance in text vs. visual processing, and would this benefit from a visual
approach:

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 Previous research on children’s processing of narrative texts has shown that the poor
readers profit generally more from text illustrations with regard to comprehension
and learning than good readers (Cooney & Swanson, 1987; Levie & Lentz, 1982);;
(Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1989; Rusted & Coltheart, 1979). This suggests that poor
readers are able to construct a mental model from a text with pictures, whereas they
would fail on the basis of a text alone. Similar results have been found for adult
learners’ processing of expository texts. Learners with low prior knowledge benefit
from pictures in a text, whereas learners with higher prior knowledge seem to be
able to construct a mental model of the described content also only from the text.
(Mayer, 1997)
Consequently, school pedagogies may privilege certain learners - those confident and at ease
with literal forms (Winn, 1987). In many but not all cases, “graphics have done more to improve
the performance of low-ability students than those of high ability” (Winn, 1987, p. 169),
particularly in science (Holliday, Brunner, & Donais, 1977) and mathematics – where it is claimed
that visuals reduced “the reading-related working memory overload in poor readers” (Moyer,
Sowder, Threadgill-Sowder, & Moyer, 1984). Though there is a claim that “low-ability learners”
have particular difficulty with materials that is informationally rich and with redundancy (Allen,
1975), those very learners labelled and placed in lower achievement groups.
However, further evidence indicates that there is a lack of explicit instruction in dealing with
graphics - that unsuccessful learners would benefit from support and guidance in mapping
between graphic and text information and the resulting mental models (Schnotz, Picard, & Hron,
1993). A US study of 13 randomised control trials (RCT) on learning difficulties in mathematics
(See Gersten et al., 2009, p. 30 for a full bibiliography) reported empirical support for using
visual representations with learners who were achieving poorly in mathematics even if this was
cited in some studies as providing only “moderate evidence” (Gersten et al., 2009, p. 30). They
placed visuals explicitly within a framework consistent with Bruner’s enactive, iconic, symbolic
representation situated specifically between physical manipulatives and abstract symbolic
representations. In this way, diagrams and visual representations should be used specifically to
support learners’ reasoning through transitions between physical models and symbolic
representations. It is further argued that student understanding of these transitions can be
strengthened through the use of visual representations of mathematical concepts (Hecht, Vagi,
& Torgesen, 2007).
A major problem for students who struggle with mathematics is weak understanding
of the relationships between the abstract symbols of mathematics and the various
visual representations. (Gersten et al., 2009, p. 30)
They go on to argue that materials specifically for pupils with difficulties, “provide very few
examples of the use of visual representations” (p. 36). We can see the same reluctance to place
visual reasoning in reteach studies examining instructional strategies – for example Darch,
Carnine, and Gersten (1984) who offer “explicit instruction” with no attempt to consider any
visual forms between word problems and solution.
A conclusion for mathematics educators is to foster an approach with teachers to recognise and
respect the visual and diagrammatical form as a pedagogical tool to represent and work on
mathematics. Low attainders seem to have greater difficulty seeing the salience in a problem
than can be represented in multiple ways - particularly the visual - or even to have a disposition
so to do. They conclude "reasoning with a diagram is a difficult process that students may need
more time and experience to develop" (Garderen, Scheuermann, & Poch, 2014, p. 147). In
addition, we do not have an understanding of the way in which diagrammatic competence
develops over time, maybe because we have little idea of what we mean by diagrammatic
competence and have rarely used it as a legitimate pedagogical device within mathematics. For
it is only once we recognise the difficultly and "lack of transparency ... Can we begin to identify
and adopt strategies to support students” (Rubenstein & Thompson, 2013, p. 550).
Siegler and Ramani (2009) take this need for privileging of the non-verbal further but argue that
whilst pre-school children from more affluent backgrounds perform better on some numerical
tasks than disadvantaged children, this differential performance can be partially alleviated by

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regular playing of linear board games - consistent with the hypothesis that playing board games
contributes to differences in numerical knowledge among children from different backgrounds,
children from middle-income families reported playing far more board games (though fewer
video games) than their low-income peers, indicating part of the gap between low-income and
middle-income children’s mathematical knowledge when they enter school is due to differing
play experiences (Ramani & Siegler, 2008; Siegler & Ramani, 2009, p. 557). Given that these
same disadvantaged children report playing board games at home less than the affluent children,
Siegler conjectured that this might be partially influential in not providing the cognitive
experience that would move them forward (See also Dehaene, 2011):
…board games provide a physical realization of the mental number line, hypothesized
to be the central conceptual structure for understanding numerical operations in
general and numerical magnitudes in particular” (Siegler & Ramani, 2009, p. 546)
Allocation of blame to working-class parents is common amongst politicians and some
researchers, yet interviews with parents in low-income families indicate that many believe the
primary responsibility for teaching mathematics lies with the professionals in schools (Holloway,
Rambaud, Fuller, & Eggers-Pkirola, 1995; Tudge & Doucet, 2004) a perhaps not surprising
position given the self-importance with which the teaching profession surrounds itself. Indeed
Tudge and Doucet (2004) studied children’s exposure to explicitly mathematical activities in their
own homes, other people’s homes, and child care centres, supporting this assertion.
A majority of children from working class backgrounds were observed engaging in
mathematical play or mathematical lessons in 0 of 180 observations. If it is indeed
correct that working-class parents look to preschool settings to provide children with
mathematics experiences . . . our data suggest that they are mistaken—we found no
evidence that children are more likely to be engaged in mathematical activities . . .
in formal childcare centers than at home (Tudge & Doucet, 2004, p. 36).
SES affects behavior through its impact on an individual's aspirations, sense of self-efficacy,
personal standards and emotional states. A strong sense of self-efficacy can help strengthen
resilience to adversity often found in the environment of the low SES student. Low SES students
often live in chaotic and unstructured environments. They live day to day. They may be unable
to manage their emotions, have poor role models, and feel they have no choice or control over
their destiny. Students with low SES may also be depressed, have a fear of failure due to past
experiences or have acquired failure expectations from their parents. They may be truly capable
children who, as a result of previous demoralizing experiences or self-imposed mind-sets, have
come to believe that they cannot learn. If they doubt their academic ability, chances are they
envision low grades before they even complete an assignment or take a test. This has an effect
on goal setting in that these individuals also tend to set lower goals for themselves. They may
have no real personal goals or vision, but only fantasies of what they hope for. If they do have
goals, these children need to learn how they can achieve the goals and develop awareness of
the possible self. Goals need to be difficult but attainable in order for significant achievement to
be recognized. We need to assign challenging tasks and meaningful activities that can be
mastered (Pajares, 1996)
One US study looks at how mathematics is organised in effective schools that serve the poor
(Kitchen, 2003; Kitchen, DePree, Celedón-Pattichis, & Brinkerhoff, 2007) Looking to “get real”
about reform for high poverty communities, Kitchen suggests three challenging policy changes.
The first is over whose interests mathematics education serves.
Transforming the mathematics education culture to value the mathematical
preparation of the majority over the achievements of a select few requires
mathematics educators to connect with movements that promote mathematical
literacy for those who have been excluded in mathematics (Kitchen, 2003)
The challenge is the idea that we should value the interests of the majority over those of a select
few - this runs counter to our system. But it surely raises the question - can we both value the
achievements of the few (who do well) as well as the many (who do less well)? Kitchen seems
to believe we can’t and I agree. There is much in the maths education literature that claims to
be socially just because it improves learning for everyone. But unless one explicitly strives to

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reduce the gap between rich and poor, then one cannot claim to be socially just; rather you are
merely giving everyone a chair to stand on. This raises a second, political, challenge:
Acknowledging that mathematical education is a political endeavour requires the mathematics
education community to recognize the reform movement should be situated in the context of
the larger movement for social and political justice. (Kitchen 2003) This too runs counter to our
culture and not everyone wants to situate maths education reform in a movement for social and
political justice. Kitchen’s final claim is a little less controversial and possibly achievable.
Proponents of reform need to question the role of an education in mathematics,
particularly at schools that serve high-poverty communities. (Kitchen, 2003)
So here is a realistic empirical question. What is the role of mathematics education in such
communities? To even ask that question is to take a political stance though - where do those
pupils struggling with maths, come from? What backgrounds do they have? What needs do they
have? Karen Pellino (2007) argues “the social world of school operates by different rules or
norms than the social world these children live in” and summarizes much of the literature on the
effects of poverty by drawing our attention to some of the characteristics of children in poverty.
They experience: high-mobility, hunger, repeated failure, low expectations, undeveloped
language, clinical depression, poor health, emotional insecurity, low self-esteem, poor
relationships, difficult home environment, a focus on survival. Kati Haycock (2001) concludes
"We take the students who have less to begin with and then systematically give them less in
school”, something noticed by Bart Simpson: “Let me get this straight. We are behind the rest
of our class and we are going to catch up to them by going slower than they are? Cuckoo!!”
(Simpson, 1996).

Conclusions
(This section is adapted from Gates (2018))
For many, the claim that economically disadvantaged children do less well at school will be hardly
controversial, or new. Yet the next stage of that argument often escapes some. This is the “so
what” question. A damaging stance is to take a deficit perspective, that “these children” need
remediation, that they miss out of stimulation in the home, that both children and parents “lack
aspiration”, and even worse, they need a more practical curriculum for a practical future,
focusing on “the basics” reinforced though repetition. In a study of 262 US preschool children,
Stipek and Ryan (1997) argue that economically disadvantaged pre-school children very quickly
developed a more negative view of their own competencies and negative attitudes to school,
both which lead to a decline in motivation leading to potential future depression of achievement
(p. 722).
Disadvantaged children are every bit as eager to learn as their more economically
advantaged peers. They do however have much further to go in terms of their
intellectual skills and, as schools are presently organized, they do not catch up.
(Stipek & Ryan, 1997, p. 722)
In a society – and school system – that extols only the virtues of the rich, famous and successful,
this is perhaps quite iniquitous but not surprising. Stipek and Ryan (1997) suggest an alternative
is to develop instructional methods that will decrease the gap in cognitive competencies
specifically targeting the self-esteem and interest of disadvantaged children. This is not an easy
policy to enforce, especially how narrowing the gap acts against the social and economic interests
of those who benefit from being at the head of the gap, but as Wilkinson and Pickett (2009)
point out, when inequity is reduced, the whole society benefits; this is indeed at the heart of
poetical struggle, the creation of “el hombre nuevo” (Guevara, 1965).
Many studies have indicated ways in which parents might support children in seeing and thinking
more mathematically, yet the practices being advanced might be more readily seen in middle
class families: taking advantage of opportunities to practice spatial thinking (Joh, Jaswal, & Keen,
2011; Newcombe, 2010; Pruden, Levine, & Huttenlocher, 2011); playing construction games
that challenge children to recreate a design from a sample or design (Ferrara, Golinkoff, Hirsh-
Pasek, Lam, & Newcombe, 2011), encouraging children to gesture when they think about spatial
problems (Cook & Goldin-Meadow, 2006; Goldin-Meadow, Nusbaum, Kelly, & Wagner, 2001),

9
playing with tangrams and jigsaw puzzles (Levine, Ratliff, Huttenlocher, & Cannon, 2012),
creating and explaining maps (Kastens & Liben, 2007), practicing mental rotation skills including
through computer games (Terlecki, Newcombe, & Little, 2008; Wright, Thompson, Ganis,
Newcombe, & Kosslyn, 2008). Studies of early cognition do suggest potentially useful strategies
which might benefit learners of mathematics from more disadvantaged backgrounds. Whilst
much work on the links between disadvantage and achievement look to generic social structures,
a look toward studies of cognitive development point toward more specific aspects of how that
process is operationalized. As a consequence, there is sufficient evidence to consider a greater
examination of the mode of communication and representation as playing a significant role.
There is another element to this. It is also well known that young people from disadvantaged
backgrounds find it harder to succeed at school mathematics than those young people who have
experienced relative economic privilege. Schools don’t make this any easier for them by placing
all such pupils together in the same mathematics groups and restricting their curriculum and
linguistic opportunities, but also restricting the development of alternative forms of
representation. Research has consistently shown that young people specifically from low SES
backgrounds do less well (Noble, Norman, & Farah, 2005), and on spatial tasks the SES
difference is confounded with gender (Levine, Vasilyeva, Lourenco, Newcombe, & Huttenlocker,
2005). This may be due to their experiences as young children, the toys they have (or don’t
have) the use they make of maps etc. Hence there is a need to explore the use of visualization
in teaching and learning mathematics and how teachers and pupils can be supported to develop
imagery and mental manipulation as a natural part of mathematics – which after all gets
increasingly abstract the further you go.
This forces us to ask, what use is made of visualisation in teaching mathematics and do groups
at different levels get the same experience, particularly those in lower-attaining groups
populated by pupils with low SES backgrounds? Low teacher expectations can influence the
methods that teachers use and can limit the access of these groups to higher order skills.
Children from low SES backgrounds may well have an impoverished mathematical experience
before school and their progress may be restricted further if teaching methods do not allow them
access to the appropriate opportunities for development. If visualisation is potentially beneficial
to mathematical development then how and when is this taught in schools, but more importantly,
how might it reduce the SES gap in achievement?
In conclusion, there is a need to examine central issues in mathematics teaching which are too
often kept apart by looking at the experiences of pupils from low SES or less affluent
backgrounds. We probably can’t do much about improving the social and economic backgrounds
of our pupils; we might however be able to do something about enhancing some of the key skills
which they have not previously been required to focus on – visual acuity, visual reasoning, and
mental representations.
How does class work in mathematics classrooms? In a process that sociologists call “symbolic
violence” – that is not actual violence – pupils, parents and schools participate in a stages process
of recognition, misrecognition and exclusion, it becomes such a natural process it is not even
noticed which is why so many teachers support and encourage setting. Being integrated into the
system it becomes too complex and onerous to overcome it.
So, what can we do? Here I will offer just four suggestions; small but significant steps that might
diminish the effect of structural inequalities in schools and which are derived from 60 years of
research in schools (Gates, 2012):
1. Engender positive, respectful social and pedagogic relationships with low SES
pupils, to explicitly foster self-esteem and resilience in working with
mathematics.
The system of organizing pupils along some imagined construct of “ability” or
“attainment” damages pupils, and robs them of their self-respect, self-esteem and their
potential engagement in mathematics. This is not though always something that is
desired by the individual teachers who have little power over school or national policies
of exclusion. However, we can do something subversive by countering very explicitly
the effects through our own personal relationships with young people in classrooms.

10
2. Treat low SES students to the same high expectations, with a demanding and
rigorous mathematics curriculum that expects all pupils to succeed and
understand.
Curriculum, pedagogy and organization combine to create a very diluted and shallow
experience for many young people with a paucity of opportunities to experience deep
mathematical ideas. The self-fulfilling prophesy forces teachers to believe these pupils
are not capable of sophisticated thinking, creating a feeling of “how could it be other?”
It will only be “other” by making it so; expect more, challenge more and demand more.
3. Recognize and embrace the diversity in the student body, value the talents and abilities
of low SES learners, encompass a respect for different life worlds and their contributions
to mathematics. Get to know the families and provide differentiated support.
By playing their part in the sociology of the school, teachers develop a concept of the
“ideal pupil” (Becker, 1952; Hempel‐Jorgensen, 2009) as a stereotype of young person
designed to perfectly fit the school system. Usually not too far removed from that of
the teachers themselves. However, few pupils fit that mould and diversity is often
emotionally felt as deviance by teachers. It then becomes no wonder these young
people reject our life-world we reject theirs. Mathematics is really not a white, male
middle class set of rules and theorems. Parents and families need to be embraced
rather than excluded from school and educational policies by recognizing the “funds of
knowledge” they hold (Moll, 1992).
4. Create and use meaningful tasks involving inquiry and cooperative learning, where low
SES learners have some control and responsibility.
Mathematics to most working-class pupils is about nothing at all; it is a purposeless
sequence of mystifying techniques: expand the brackets, turn upside down and
multiply, and so many more. No-one enthusiastically engages in purposeless activity
for long. Indeed, when incarcerated, purposeless activity became a punishment. One
mathematics lesson after another! Furthermore, schools do their utmost to remove any
responsibility and control by pupils, even often (at least in the UKJ) determining what
colour socks they wear. Giving young people a purpose, and some responsibility is
surely a major step in drawing them into the world of mathematics (for examples of
how this might be achieved see Gutstein, 2006).
Yet there is political work to do amongst teachers themselves if we are to seek a resolution to
the current damaging segregation in our system.
Teachers need to be tuned in to the culture of poverty and be sensitive to the vast
array of needs that children of poverty bring to the classroom. Social contexts have
a significant impact on the development of children. The social world of school
operates by different rules or norms than the social world these children live in. Focus
should be placed on finding a harmonious relationship between the cultural values of
students and values emphasized in school. (Pellino, 2007)
Too often we overlook this elephant in our classrooms and try to pretend we are all in it together
and striving for the same things. I have argued how maths teaching is a political act and how
teacher beliefs are themselves political (Gates, 2001, 2006, 2010). So what you teach and how
you teach it are intimately linked to your own political beliefs. I am encouraged by the argument
of Wilkinson and Picket in The Spirit Level (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009) that inequality is bad for
all of us. Treating people unfairly will reduce social cohesion, leading to social unrest and conflict.
A challenge for all of us is to fight the demons that cause us to expect little from learners from
less affluent backgrounds and, more specifically, to recognize the influence that poverty has on
all aspect of teaching and learning mathematics. Engaging explicitly with class and social
differences in learning has been shown to have the potential to open up greater opportunities
for higher order thinking (Jorgensen et al., 2011), and for raising the intellectual quality of pupil
cognition (Kitchen et al., 2007). Class, in some guise or another, is always a latent variable
whose invisibility obscures possibilities for action. However this remains not merely an epistemic

11
or empirical question, but a political and an ideological one and your response to this chapter,
will be similarly political.

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