Students, agency and mathematical subjectivity

This paper reports on a study of 18 Swedish year 1 students’ (7–8 years) work with mathematics textbooks analysed according to the concept of agency. The empirical data consisted of video material, students’ representations and mathematics textbooks. The result showed that some exercises enable agency, and some do not. Also, students’ opportunities for agency are affected by the notion that, according to the students, mathematical symbols are the resource that should be used to be considered successful in mathematics. A conclusion from this is that the textbook needs to be used consciously, offering different learning situations based on both opportunities for agency and multimodal aspects to provide all students learning situations that benefit both learning and the opportunity to discover themselves as mathematical individuals