Researching multicultural mathematics classroom through the lens of landscapes of learning: NORMA 2008

Students' motives for learning mathematics cannot be understood by looking solely at mathematical classroom activities. We discuss this claim in a multicultural context using the notion of 'landscapes of learning'. This notion serves as a theoretical and methodological tool that both defines a research perspective and sketches a field of empirical research. In this paper we want to focus on the notion and illustrate its usefulness when researching mathematical learning in multicultural contexts. We draw on data and results of an empirical study on student’s foregrounds with 45 teenage students in two 8th grade multicultural classes in Denmark. We show the dialectical relationship between each dimension of the landscape and the whole of it; and how, as a whole, it can help us coming closer to better theorisations.