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This paper reports on a research project relating to the newly implemented mandatory Swedish national mathematics tests for third-grade students (aged nine and ten). The project’s main research concerns the students’ ideas about and reactions towards these tests and how the specific test situation affects their perception of their own mathematical proficiency. Drawing on theories which suggest that identities are more fluid than static, we want to understand how students with special needs are ‘created’. The specific aim of this paper is to discuss how our research methods have been refined during the various phases of data collection and the resulting implications. It discusses issues surrounding child research and how methods involving video recording and video stimulated recall dialogue (VSRD) can contribute to research on children’s experiences. Particular attention is given to methodological and ethical issues; how to disrupt power relations, for example. In this paper we argue that the context of the test situation not only impacted upon the students but also affected how we changed, developed and adapted our approaches as the project evolved.

This article reports on a Swedish research project on the reintroduction of national tests in mathematics for nine- to ten-year-old pupils. Data were collected over a period of three years (2010-2012) by video recording test situations in different classrooms and by conducting video-stimulated recall interviews with children. The aim is to explore and analyse the testing situation and how it creates different positions for children. We conclude that discourses of testing, caring and competition, sometimes strengthening and sometimes shadowing each other and thereby, produce knowledge in children about success and failure in mathematics, positioning children as ‘winners’ or ‘losers’. The tests are interpreted as a technology – a form of disciplinary power that functions at the level of the body (Foucault, 1980).

This article throws light on the educational practice of teachers providing additional support to students during tests, more specifically during the national tests in mathematics for third graders in Sweden (hereafter called Ntm3) for the years 2010 and 2011. Both the test instructions and teacher talk related to these tests were taken into consideration. The results suggest that issues of equity and teachers’ agency arise when considering support. The dual purpose of the test, to evaluate the student and to evaluate the education, positions the teacher as both a test-giver and a test-taker and influences the discourse on support by ambiguity. I found that in such circumstances, when students´ equity comes into conflict with the test´s equality, the focus during the tests shifts from attention to learning to attention to controlling.

Denna artikel studerar förutsättningarna för det stöd som kan ges till elever i samband med det nationella provet i matematik i det tredje skolåret (härefter kallat Ntm3), i Sverige under 2010 och 2011. Den stöddiskurs som aktiveras i samband med proven har avgränsats genom att provets instruktioner samt åtta intervjuer med lärare har analyserats. Resultaten indikerar att provet leder till att provdeltagarnas fokus förskjuts från lärande till kontroll och att provets dubbla syften positionerar läraren som både testtagare och testgivare. Detta visar sig som en ambivalens i stöddiskursen och leder till ett pedagogiskt dilemma i situationer där provets likvärdighet sätts mot elevens.

The focus of this paper is the conceptualisation of students in special educationalneeds in mathematics (SEM students) in the research fields of mathematics andspecial education. A difference between fields regarding the perspectives takenon the SEM student is obvious in the reviewed articles. Those in the specialeducational field were individual oriented in their view of the difficulties, whilstreviewed articles from the field of mathematics education more often discusssocio-cultural settings. The content in the selected 28 articles reveals that theoverall conceptualisation of SEM student has to do with the social construct ofthe SEM student, as well as with students’ experiences, affects, andprerequisites; with the specific training methods or interventions applied; withspecial areas in the subject of mathematics; with special groups of students; andwith teachers’ knowledge about all these factors.