Abstract
School reform efforts are situated within social and political contexts and, as such, are susceptible to the commonsense discourses circulating through, and sha**, society. Two discourses prevalent in US education reform are those perpetuating the ideologies of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. These ideologies are inherently contradictory—with the former promoting a small state and the latter a strong state—but converge to promote their agendas, sha** school reform efforts. How this occurs is not always clear, especially in rural contexts, where there has been limited attention to ideological discourses’ relation to schooling. In this analysis, we describe how dominant, yet contradictory, discourses of neoliberalism and neoconservatism are resolved in a rural context. We find that the leaders of one rural, public school district identified fifth-grade number sense as a problem of practice needing improvement—framing the cause of their problem as misalignment and the solution as consistency within and across grade levels. In doing so, district leaders’ conversations were limited to those of standardization (e.g., state-mandated mathematics standards, approaches to timed-fact tests, and curriculum between grade levels). Alignment as a frame excluded conversations related to deeper considerations, such as students’ experiences in mathematics or issues of equity. We find that dominant discourses constrain the ways district leaders frame their mathematics-related problem and work through the frame (in this case, one of alignment) to resolve inherent contradictions and advance their agendas. We suggest that these discourses serve to distract from potentially more pressing issues in education.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, K. T., & Holloway, J. (2020). Discourse analysis as theory, method, and epistemology in studies of education policy. Journal of Education Policy, 35(2), 188–221. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2018.1552992.
Andrade-Molina, M., & Montecino, A. (2019). On the marketing and distribution of school mathematics textbooks in a neoliberal context. In S. Rezat, L. Fan, M. Hattermann, J. Schumacher, & H. Wuschke, (Eds.), Proceedings of the Third Conference on Mathematics Textbook Research and Development (pp. 125–130).Universitätsbibliothek Paderborn. https://doi.org/10.17619/UNIPB/1-768.
Apple, M. W. (1992). Thinking more politically about the challenges before us: A response to Romberg. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 23(5), 438–440. https://doi.org/10.2307/749564.
Apple, M. W. (1993). The politics of official knowledge: Does a national curriculum make sense? Teachers College Record, 95(2), 222–241. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146819309500206.
Apple, M. W. (2000). Mathematics reform through conservative modernization? Standards, markets, and inequality in education. In J. Boaler (Ed.), Multiple Perspectives on Mathematics Teaching and Learning (pp. 243–259). Ablex Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904800014002007.
Apple, M. (2001). Educating the right way: Markets, standards, god, and inequality. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603110116991.
Apple, M. W. (2004). Ideology and curriculum (third edit). RoutledgeFalmer. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203487563.
Apple, M. W. (2006). Understanding and interrupting neoliberalism and neoconservatism in education. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 1(1), 21–26. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15544818ped0101_4.
Apple, M. W. (2017). What is present and absent in critical analyses of neoliberalism in education. Peabody Journal of Education, 92(1), 148–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956x.2016.1265344.
Apple, M. W., & Christian-Smith, L. K. (1991). The politics of the textbook. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.32316/hse/rhe.v4i1.756.
Bacchi, C. (2000). Policy as discourse: What does it mean? Where does it get us? Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 21(1), 45–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596300050005493.
Benford, R. D., & Snow, D. A. (2000). Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, 26(1), 611–639. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.611.
Berliner, D. C., & Biddle, B. J. (1995). The manufactured crisis: Myths, fraud, and the attack on America’s public schools. Basic Books. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4539-1735-0/41
Boaler, J. (2014). Research suggests that timed tests cause math anxiety. Teaching Children Mathematics, 20(8), 469–474. https://doi.org/10.5951/teacchilmath.20.8.0469.
Brown, W. (2006). American nightmare: Neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and de-democratization. Political Theory, 34(6), 690–714. https://doi.org/10.7312/blau17412-078.
Carey, R. L. (2014). A cultural analysis of the achievement gap discourse: Challenging the language and labels used in the work of school reform. Urban Education, 49(4), 440–468. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085913507459.
Coburn, C. E. (2006). Framing the problem of reading instruction: Using frame analysis to uncover the microprocesses of policy implementation. American Educational Research Journal, 43(3), 343–349. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312043003343.
Courtney, S. J., & Mann, B. (2021). Thinking with ‘lexical’features to reconceptualize the ‘grammar’of schooling: Shifting the focus from school to society. Journal of Educational Change, 22, 401–421. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-020-09400-4.
Croft, S. J., Roberts, M. A., & Stenhouse, V. L. (2015). The perfect storm of education reform: High-stakes testing and teacher evaluation. Social Justice, 42(1), 70–92. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24871313.
Darragh, L., Boistrup, L. B., Valero, P., Adams, G., & Povey, H. (2017). Neoliberalism: A crisis for mathematics education. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of Mathematics Education and Society (Vol. 1, pp. 149–153).
Doğan, O., & Haser, Ç. (2014). Neoliberal and nationalist discourses in Turkish elementary mathematics education. ZDM-Mathematics Education, 46(7), 1013–1023. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-014-0605-z.
Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Towards clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01304.x.
Ernest, P. (2018). The ethics of mathematics: Is mathematics harmful? In P. Ernest (Ed.) The Philosophy of Mathematics Education Today (Vol. I, pp. 187–216). Springer International. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77760-3_12.
Fairclough, N. (2015). Language and power (3rd ed.). Pearson Education.
Farley, A. N., Leonardi, B., & Donnor, J. K. (2021). Perpetuating inequalities: The role of political distraction in education policy. Educational Policy, 35(2), 163–179. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904820987992.
Ferree, M. M. (2003). Resonance and radicalism: Feminist framing in the abortion debates of the United States and Germany. American Journal of Sociology, 109(2), 304–344. https://doi.org/10.1086/378343.
Ferrini-Mundy, J., Borba, M. C., Ginshima, F., Prenzel, M., & Zomahoun, T. (2017). National and International Investment Strategies for Mathematics Education. In Proceedings of the 13th International Congress on Mathematical Education (pp. 649–650). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62597-3_89.
Gee, J. P. (2014). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. Routledge.
Giroux, H. A. (2006). Spectacles of race and pedagogies of denial: Antiblack racist pedagogy. In D. Macedo & P. Gounari (Eds.), The globalization of racism (pp. 68–93). Paradigm.
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Harvard University Press.
Gotanda, N. (1991). A critique of our constitution is Color-Blind. Stanford Law Review, 44(1), 1–68.
Grossman, P. L., & Stodolsky, S. S. (1995). Content as context: The role of school subjects in secondary school teaching. Educational Researcher, 24(8), 5–23. https://doi.org/10.2307/1176887.
Gruenewald, D. A. (2003). Foundations of place: A multidisciplinary framework for place-conscious education. American Educational Research Journal, 40(3), 619–654. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312040003619.
Hagedorn, L. S., & Purnamasari, A. V. (2012). A realistic look at STEM and the role of Community Colleges. Community College Review, 40(2), 145–164. https://doi.org/10.1177/0091552112443701.
Hill, D. (2006). Class, capital, and education in this neoliberal and neoconservative period. Information for Social Change, 23, 11–35.
Hopkins, T. M. (2005). If you are poor, it is better to be rural: A study of mathematics achievement in Tennessee. The Rural Educator, 27(1), 21–28. https://doi.org/10.35608/ruraled.v27i1.501.
Howley, C. B., & Howley, A. A. (2004). School size and the influence of socioeconomic status on student achievement. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 12(52), 1–35. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v12n52.2004.
Jackson, K., Cobb, P., Rigby, J. G., & Smith, T. M. (2018a). District instructional leadership. In P. Cobb, K. Jackson, E. Henrick, & T. M. Smith (Eds.), (Eds.), Systems for instructional improvement: Creating coherence from the classroom to the district office. Harvard Education. the MIST Team.
Jackson, K., Wilhelm, A. G., & Munter, C. (2018b). Specifying goals for students’ mathematics learning and the development of teachers’ knowledge, perspectives, and practice. In P. Cobb, K. Jackson, E. Henrick, & T. M. Smith (Eds.), (Eds.), Systems for instructional improvement: Creating coherence from the classroom to the district office (pp. 43–64). Harvard Education. the MIST Team.
Kim, S., & Dorner, L. M. (2021). School district responses to demographic change: Competing discourses of equity, competition, and community. Journal of Language Identity & Education, 20(4), 225–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2020.1753197.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding achievement in US schools. Educational Researcher, 35(7), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x035007003.
Lester, J. N., Lochmiller, C. R., & Gabriel, R. (2017). Exploring the intersection of education policy and discourse analysis: An introduction. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 25(25). https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.25.2971.
Lipman, P. (2012). Neoliberal urbanism, race, and equity in mathematics education. Journal of Urban Mathematics Education, 5(2), 6–17. https://doi.org/10.21423/jume-v5i2a191.
Lipman, P. (2013). The new political economy of urban education: Neoliberalism, race, and the right to the city. Routledge.
Llewellyn, A., & Mendick, H. (2010). Does every child count? Quality, equity and mathematics with/in neoliberalism. In B. Atweh, M. Graven, W. Secada, & P. Valero (Eds.), Map** equity and quality in mathematics education (pp. 49–62). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9803-0_4.
Maguire, M., Braun, A., & Ball, S. (2015). Where you stand depends on where you sit’: The social construction of policy enactments in the (English) secondary school. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 36(4), 485–499. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2014.977022.
Martin, D. B. (2013). Race, racial projects, and mathematics education. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 44(1), 316–333. https://doi.org/10.5951/jresematheduc.44.1.0316.
Martin, D. B. (2015). The collective black and principles to actions. Journal of Urban Mathematics Education, 8(1), 17–23. https://doi.org/10.21423/jume-v8i1a270.
McCammon, H. J., Muse, C. S., Newman, H. D., & Terrell, T. M. (2007). Movement framing and discursive opportunity structures: The political successes of the US women’s jury movements. American Sociological Review, 72(5), 725–749. https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240707200504.
Munter, C., Nguyen, P., & Kinder, C. (2023). Framing school mathematics challenges inside and outside metropolitan areas. Teachers College Record, 125(2), 35–65. https://doi.org/10.1177/01614681231161236.
National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE) (1983). A nation at risk: A report to the nation and the Secretary of Education.
Nazemi, M. (2017). Racialized narratives of female students of color: Learning mathematics in a neoliberal context (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest. (10622822).
Oakes, J. (2005). Kee** track: How schools structure inequality (2nd ed.). Yale University Press.
Penuel, W. R., Fishman, B. J., Cheng, H., B., & Sabelli, N. (2011). Organizing research and development at the intersection of learning, implementation, and design. Educational Researcher, 40(7), 331–337. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X11421826.
Ransom, S. (1995). Theorizing educational policy. Journal of Education Policy, 10, 427–448.
Reisigl, M., & Wodak, R. (2009). The discourse-historical approach. In R. Wodak, & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (2nd ed., pp. 87–121). Sage.
Remillard, J. T., & Heck, D. J. (2014). Conceptualizing the curriculum enactment process in mathematics education. ZDM-Mathematics Education, 46(5), 705–718. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-014-0600-4.
Robertson, S. L. (2012). Placing teachers in global governance agendas. Comparative Education Review, 56(4), 584–607. https://doi.org/10.1086/667414.
Schoenfeld, A. H. (2004). The math wars. Educational Policy, 18(1), 253–286. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904803260042.
Sengupta-Irving, T. (2021). Positioning and positioned apart: Mathematics learning as becoming undesirable. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 52(2), 187–208. https://doi.org/10.1111/aeq.12378.
Smith, W. C. (2014). The global transformation toward testing for accountability. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22(116), n116. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v22.1571.
Snow, D. A., & Benford, R. D. (1988). Ideology, frame resonance, and participant mobilization. International Social Movement Research, 1(1), 197–217.
Snow, D. A., Vliegenthart, R., & Ketelaars, P. (2019). The framing perspective on social movements: Its conceptual roots and architecture. In D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule, H. Kriesi, & H. J. McCammon (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell companion to social movements (2nd ed., pp. 392–410). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119168577.ch22.
Stone, D. A. (1989). Causal stories and the formation of policy agendas. Political Science Quarterly, 104(2), 281–300. https://doi.org/10.2307/2151585.
Tate, W. F., & Hogrebe, M. C. (2015). Poverty and algebra performance: A comparative spatial analysis of a border South state. Peabody Journal of Education, 90(3), 380–403. https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2015.1045732.
Tatto, M. T. (2006). Education reform and the global regulation of teachers’ education, development and work: A cross-cultural analysis. International Journal of Educational Research, 45(4–5), 231–241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2007.02.003.
Valero, P. (2017). Mathematics for all, economic growth, and the making of the citizen-worker. A Political Sociology of Educational Knowledge, 117–132. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315528533-8.
Winant, H. (2004). The new politics of race: Globalism, difference, justice. University of Minnesota.
Yeh, C. (2018). Democratic accountability in the neoliberal era: The politics of teaching and teacher education in mathematics classrooms. Policy Futures in Education, 16(6), 764–780. https://doi.org/10.1177/1478210318776470.
Acknowledgements
Portions of this article are based on a paper published in the proceedings of the Eleventh Mathematics Education and Society conference. Many thanks to the district leaders who participated in the study and to Cara Haines and Rebecca Bruton for their work early on. The authors would also like to thank some of the artists who soundtracked their work on this manuscript. The lead author thanks Joy Oladokun (In Defense of My Own Happiness); the second author thanks Hurray for the Riff Raff (Life on Earth), Anteloper (Pink Dolphins), and The Smile (A Light for Attracting Attention); the third author thanks Taylor Swift.
Funding
This work was funded by a University of Missouri Research Board grant.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Kinder, C., Munter, C. & Nguyen, P. Aligning school mathematics with a manufactured crisis: re-rendering neoliberal and neoconservative discourses as commonsensical in a rural place. Educ Stud Math (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-024-10340-6
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-024-10340-6