Using Case Study to Explore the Relationship between Mathematics Achievement and Ethnicity, Class and Gender Teaching as Mediated by Classroom Engagement

The investigation of this small scale inquiry focuses on linking students’ mathematics achievement patterns (i.e. macro level) to engagement in mathematics tasks in a classroom through a socio cultural lens i.e. Bourdieu’s theory of social practice. The role of factors such as ethnicity, gender and social class are also analysed. The findings of the study show that classrooms are positioned in a school field (and schools are positioned in a wider field such as the Local Education Authority) according to their possession of collective institutional capital i.e. students’ GCSE Mathematics performances, which then can be seen to impact the subjective roles of the students in it (as a result of the inner struggle of the classroom field to improve their position). Case study analysis of a Year 8 mathematics classroom reveals that students are objectively positioned within their classrooms according to their individual institutional cultural capital (i.e. prior achievement in mathematics) and the teacher’s subjective positioning (through the teacher’s perception of their ability) and their own subjective positioning, which is informed by and constitutes their embodied cultural capital. These subjective roles, i.e. students’ engagement or disengagement in mathematics tasks, then appears to either hinder or facilitate the students re-investing their institutional cultural capital in the classroom field. Gender and ethnicity are seen to be manifest in the embodied cultural capitals of these students (as reflected at the micro level). Social class (along with the other factors) can be seen to be reflected at the achievement level.