Research forum: Rituals and explorations in mathematical teaching and learning

INTRODUCTION The discourse of mathematics education research is replete with conceptual dyads such as “procedural vs. conceptual”, “individual vs. social”, “extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation” and “mathematical dis/ability”. To these well-known dyads, a relatively new conceptual pair was introduced a decade ago: ritual vs. exploration. Originally, this pair has been conceived by Sfard (2008) as types of routines. Ritual routines were defined as routines "whose goal (closing condition) is alignment with others and social approval" (p. 301) while exploration routines were defined as routines "whose goal(closing condition) is production of an endorsed narrative" (p. 298). Later works, drawing on Sfard, defined ritual participation as mathematical performance for the sake of connecting with others or “people pleasing” (Heyd-Metzuyanim & Graven, 2016).In a PME Working Sessions in 2016, we examined the affordances and limitations of this dyad, and began asking questions about its connection with other prevalent dyads in the field. Recently, a special issue (SI) (Heyd-Metzuyanim & Graven, 2019) emerged from these discussions. The current Research Forum is intended to bring back to the PME community the product of this SI so as to spur further discussion and research around this dyad. (...)