Using Bernstein and Bourdieu to understand children's difficulties with "realistic" mathematics testing: An exploratory study

Abstract

This paper, which is exploratory in nature, uses the ideas of Bernstein and Bourdieu on class and culture to make sense of children's difficulties with "realistic" mathematics test items. In particular, it suggests that the use of such test items may discriminate against working-class testees as a consequence of these children's tendency to interpret formal educational contexts as legitimate arenas for the employment of everyday knowledge when such use is actually "inappropriate." The paper's exploratory nature is reflected in its structure. Rather than beginning with a presentation of the relevant theoretical ideas, the paper intersperses these with the presentation of data in the form of transcripts from interviews during which children attempted test items. This structure reflects better the process by which the working model of the relation between culture and assessment presented in the paper was developed. An introductory discussion of the curriculum and assessment policy context in England is followed by a discussion of data and theoretical ideas during which Bernstein's concepts of recognition and realisation rules and aspects of Bourdieu's accounts of habitus are set against children's interpretations of items. This discussion leads to the presentation of the model.