Motivations and meanings of students’

Abstract: This article presents an analysis of about 100 interviews with students from eight-grade classrooms in Berlin, Hong Kong and San Diego that reconstructs student motivations and the meanings they attribute to classroom activities. The data of the six classrooms were produced in the Learner’s Perspective Study (LPS). The LPS is an international collaboration of researchers investigating practices in eighth-grade mathematics classrooms in 13 countries. Although not the central focus of the research, the case study of six classrooms revealed a variety of students ’ beliefs and perceptions, which are the focus of this article. These correspond to the possibilities the classroom practices offer. The study also reveals some similarities among student motives and concerns across classrooms. The findings are an important reminder that basing a curriculum upon an alternative vision calls for changing mathematical content as well as the social relations that are established through teaching methods and principles of evaluation. Kurzreferat: Grundlage der Analyse sind Interviews mit ca. 100 Schülerinnen und Schülern, die im Rahmen der “Learner’s Perspective Study ” (LPS) durchgeführt worden sind. Die LPS untersucht den Mathematikunterricht in achten Klassen in 1