MATHEMATICAL THINKING AND LEARNING, 6(3), 343–352

Copyright © 2004, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Book Review

Are Beliefs Believable?

Leder, G., Pehkonen, E. & Törner, G. (Eds.) 2002, Beliefs: A hidden
variable in mathematics education?, Kluwer, Dordrecht.

John Mason
Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

Since its modern roots in the 1950s, research in mathematics education has be-
come a well established, even prolific domain of study. Granted, there is disagree-
ment as to whether it is an eclectic collection of methods, questions, and perspec-
tives, a field of application for other disciplines, or a developing discipline in its
own right. We do know that the teaching of mathematics has been of great concern
since ancient Babylonian, Egyptian, and Chinese civilizations if not before.
Are we making any progress? Do we really know a great deal more now than
Polya knew, or Davis, or Nunn, or Recorde, or Plato and Socrates, or hundreds of
unknown scribes in the Middle and Far East? Why, after so many centuries of in-
creasingly concentrated study are we no nearer resolving the central questions of
mathematics education: how can learners’ experiences and understanding of math-
ematics be improved? What blocks learners from learning mathematics efficiently
and effectively?
Of course questions like these are framed using terms which need clarifying be-
fore the questions can be addressed and studied, and any one question prompts a
flurry of other related ones. This is what makes mathematics education such a
lively domain.
If you listen to politicians talking, you still hear the perspective that a quick fix
here and a forceful tweak there, and certainly more assessment to establish targets,
should force the teaching, and hence presumably learning to improve. If you listen

Requests for reprints should be sent to John Mason, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK. E-mail:
j.h.mason@open.ac.uk
344 MASON

to mathematicians talking about their teaching, you still frequently hear the per-
spective that if we can just get the exposition right, then learners will learn. If you
listen to school teachers talking, you still hear the perspective that if only things
were different: more resources, more time, less paper-work…things could im-
prove. A naive novice teacher and a naive politician or civil servant could be for-
given for thinking that what they need to know is the best method(s) of teaching
which topics to whom under what conditions. Why cannot best practice be deter-
mined through research, and then followed by the mass of teachers?
This politician’s Shangri La, this novice teacher’s Eldorado is, of course, unob-
tainable. Human beings as sense-making organisms are many orders of magnitude
more complicated than human beings as electrochemical machines that can be
treated with pills and surgery called medicine. Human beings make decisions.
They choose to act, though often those choices are made not in the moment when
they think they are being made, but rather days, hours, months, and years previ-
ously when habits have been established. No recipe can deal with the intensely per-
sonal and the complexly social forces at play in all teaching–learning situations.

SHIFTING THEMES AND FOCI OF RESEARCH IN

MATHEMATICS EDUCATION

Early mathematics education was concerned with specific topics, trying to struc-
ture programmed-learning texts to resolve and mechanize the teaching of mathe-
matics. This thread is alive and well in computer software which augments teach-
ing through keeping records of learners’ success on random exercises, with clever
adjustment of questions to meet user performance. It remains a not-so-secret wish
of politicians to reduce the cost of education by replacing teachers with machines,
at least for routine aspects of teaching.
Problem solving has come to the fore and receded to the background several
times since the 1950s under the guise of problem solving, investigations, guided
discovery, and project work. There have been periods when specific topics have
been probed in detail for epistemological obstacles (Bachelard, 1938); when di-
dactic phenomena have been located to use as starting points (Freudenthal, 1973);
when realistic and real-problem-solving have been advocated (e.g., the USMES
project in the 1970s; Open University, 1982; Mellin-Olsen, 1987), even to the ex-
tent of critical mathematics (Frankenstein, 1989). There have been times when
teacher subject knowledge has been the focus; when psychologizing the subject
matter (Dewey, 1938; Shulman 1986) has been the focus; when group work and
learner collaboration has been the focus. These foci keep turning up under new la-
bels but with essentially the same force and content.
Sometimes research focuses on learners, trying to work out what makes mathe-
matics so difficult. Sometimes it shifts to teachers to study how teachers come to
 REVIEW 345

teach the way they do, and why teacher education seems to have relatively little im-
pact. Sometimes research shifts to factors influencing inservice-training and con-
tinuing professional development. Sometimes it shifts to textbooks and published
schemes of work.
The history of mathematics education research reads like an essay in frustra-
tion, as researchers, unable to resolve core problems turn to other disciplines for
inspiration concerning perspective, as in constructivisms (psychological, radical,
social), social-interactionism, enactivism, social equity (inclusion, mixed-ability
teaching, etc.), and concerning method, as in discourse analysis, large and small
surveys, interviews whether clinical, formal or informal, ethnography, pheno-
menography, action-research, and so on.
Trying desperately to make sense of the complexity involved in engineering the
learning of mathematics for most if not all learners, we cast about looking for the
magic primal cause of the current state of mathematics learning.
Could it be the neural network development of the brain (left-right brain differ-
ences, dyscalculia, etc.) that makes it very difficult for many children to learn what
we teach in the way we currently teach? Could it be sociocultural forces, lack of
cultural capital, anti-intellectualism in homes and in the media, lack of exercise,
influence of television and computers, shortened attention spans, and so on that
impede learning? Can it be the way we teach, and has that way really changed
greatly for most teachers and for most learners over the last 100 years? Can it be
that what we teach is neither relevant nor attractive, nor able to be made attractive?
Is it the changing status of young people as participants in the economic web of
western societies? Is it the lack of suitably qualified and inspired teachers? Is it the
deprofessionalization of teachers through central control of what is taught and the
imposition of more and more detailed targets and inspections in the name of ac-
countability? Is it teachers subverting national or governmental plans and goals? Is
cultural transmission and peripheral participation through being in the presence of
an expert merely reproducing mediocrity or worse? Might there be a latent or cul-
tural anxiety about mathematics? About tests? About school? About growing up?
Complexity lovers will want to answer all of these in various measures; simplic-
ity lovers and lovers of cause-and-effect will want to isolate a few salient forces,
even causes. Most researchers will recognize that all of these (and more) play a
part, but that to make progress it is necessary to isolate one or two factors to study
in depth while trying to hold the others more or less constant.
To the eternal frustration of politicians, research conclusions always include a
claim that more research is needed in a never-ending process of enquiry refine-
ment. If mathematics education research were actually successful, it would obviate
the need for itself. Instead, it burgeons. Of course there are social forces such as de-
mands that university teachers, including teacher educators, should also do re-
search. The research agenda is self-promulgating. Yet, as teachers and as research-
ers we remain perplexed to account for the apparent difficulty and obstinacy which
346 MASON

human beings display in learning what governments have declared they should
learn under the heading of mathematics. Perhaps it is the stable quality of teacher
beliefs, picked up in school as learners, and culturally robust against attempts by
outsiders to try to change practices that lies at the core of a useful analysis. Perhaps
beliefs are a hidden variable.

BELIEFS AND CREDES

People act. For example, teachers talk; they ask questions; they prompt and probe,
they inveigle and stimulate, support, and draw learners out, like midwives for
ideas, as Plato reports Socrates describing himself. Where do those acts come
from? What shapes and prompts them? One way to account for people’s actions is
to say that they are generated by beliefs which they hold. Another way to account
for them is on the basis of habits which have been formed through prior experi-
ences. Another way to account for them is as the natural response of human organ-
isms to problem situations: action as knowledge and knowledge as action. Another
way to account for them is as the result of rational choices, made either in prepara-
tion or in the moment.
Thompson (1984) initiated a line of research in mathematics education that fo-
cused on beliefs that teachers hold about mathematics, about how people learn
mathematics, and about effective teaching of mathematics (for a survey see
Thompson, 1992). This later developed to include learners’ beliefs about these
same issues. Perhaps mismatch between the beliefs of learners and teachers could
account for ineffectiveness of some attempts at teaching. Perhaps differing philo-
sophical positions could account for miscommunication between teacher and
learner (Lerman 1993). Perhaps mismatches between epistemological positions
accounts for disaffection in mathematics classrooms (Belenky, Clinchy, Gold-
berger, & Tarule, 1986; Perry, 1968). Perhaps what motivates learners at different
ages is not what interests teachers, raising the issue of relevance (perceived, acti-
vated, proximal). Perhaps mismatches between what teachers think (believe) they
do and what they are observed doing (and how it is interpreted by learners, not to
say observing researchers) accounts for confusions for learners. Perhaps differ-
ences between espoused and enacted beliefs give confusing messages to learners.
Perhaps sociocultural backgrounds make communication in general more difficult
than it appears. Perhaps different sociocultural backgrounds involve placing dif-
ferent stress on different components of teaching and learning, producing commu-
nication barriers.
Everything in the previous paragraph applies to teachers and learners in
schools, in universities, in teacher education, and in continuing professional de-
velopment.
 REVIEW 347

It is with eager anticipation, then, that one turns to the book under review. Are
beliefs a hidden variable? Perhaps even the hidden variable?
The book arose from a working conference held in Oberwolfach in 1999. The
task was to get to grips with beliefs and their role in the teaching and learning of
mathematics. The first stumbling block is to work out what beliefs actually are,
and where they fit into an entire alphabet of associated interlinked terms:

A is for attitudes, affect, aptitude, and aims; B is for beliefs; C is for con-
structs, conceptions, and concerns; D is for demeanor and dispositions; E is
for emotions, empathies, and expectations; F is for feelings; G is for goals
and gatherings; H is for habits and habitus; I is for intentions, interests, and
intuitions; J is for justifications and judgements; K is for knowing; L is for
leanings; M is for meaning-to; N is for norms; O is for orientations and ob-
jectives; P is for propensities, perspectives, and predispositions; Q is for
quirks and quiddity; R is for recognitions and resonances; S is for sympa-
thies and sensations; T is for tendencies and truths; U is for understandings
and undertakings; V is for values and views; W is for wishes, warrants,
worlds, and weltanschauung; X is for xenophilia (perhaps); Y is for yearn-
ings and yens; and Z is for zeitgeist and zeal.

No wonder it is hard to make sense of it all! The book divides the task into three
parts: conceptualization and measurement of beliefs, teachers’ beliefs, and stu-
dents’ beliefs.

WHAT IS BELIEF, THEN?

The position advanced in the first seven chapters which form the first section of the
book is that the notion of belief is very complex and hard to define precisely. Some
authors are content to work informally with implied meanings, whereas others try
to pin it down very precisely, almost mathematically, as with Goldin:

… multiply-encoded cognitive/affective configurations, usually including (but not

limited to) propositional encoding, to which the holder attributes some kind of truth
value… (logical truth, empirical truth, validity, applicability to some degree of ap-
proximation, metaphysical truth, religious truth, practical truth, or conventional
truth).
a belief structure is a set of mutually consistent, mutually reinforcing, or mutually
supportive beliefs and warrants in the individual, mainly cognitive, but often incor-
porating supportive affect. A belief system is an elaborate or extensive belief structure
that is socially or culturally shared.
348 MASON

The attribution of truth (of some kind) that turns mere propositions, conjectures,
stories, or hypotheses into beliefs.

You cannot go very far in analysing the notion of beliefs before tripping over
the philosopher’s conundrum as to how to distinguish between beliefs that are in
fact true (whatever that might mean), and those that are false but felt to be true;
between those that are justified, those that are justifiable, and those for which
there is no justification, or whose attempted justification does not bear scrutiny.
It is a minefield, and the authors of the first seven chapters struggle to bring co-
herence to the issue.
Eyende, de Corte, and Verschaffel point out that beliefs can be about mathemat-
ics, about your self, about learning and the role of a learner, about teaching and the
role of a teacher, and about the nature of knowledge, as well as about the relation of
the individual to the social. They integrate perspectives of a number of previous au-
thors (including Underhill, Mcleod, Kloosterman, & Pekhonen, ending up with a
triadic structure using the terms object (mathematics education), context (class,
classroom) and self, which mirrors the classic mathematics–teacher–learner triad
set within an environment. Furinghetti and Pekhonen approach beliefs from the
point of view of conceptions, using the triad beliefs–conceptions–knowledge and
illustrate this with extracts from other author’s empirical studies. Goldin introduce
the triad of affect, meta-affect, and mathematical belief structures as a system of
representation for affect: affect stabilizes beliefs and beliefs establish meta-affec-
tive contexts. Törner searches for common ground amongst various approaches
ending with belief as a quadruple consisting of a debatable belief object, mental as-
sociations (what is traditionally called a belief), and two functions which measure
intensity and range. Leder and Forgasz review different definitions of belief since
the 1970s, and methods of measuring beliefs from the 1920s, ending with a recom-
mendation for the use of the Experience Sampling Method developed in the 1970s.
Mcleod and Mcleod provide a synthesis of the section and a suggestion of implica-
tions for learning, teaching, and research.
There is no doubt that this section of the book will form the requisite back-
ground reading for graduate students and researchers who study any aspect of
mathematics education that impinges on, or is influenced by, attitudes, beliefs,
conceptions, dispositions, and so on.

BELIEFS APPLIED TO TEACHERS

The seven chapters of the second section of the book report on studies probing
teachers’ beliefs in different settings. There is plenty of evidence presented that
what a teacher might do in practice might be suggested by stated, claimed, and es-
poused beliefs, but that there is often a great difference between professed beliefs
 REVIEW 349

and actions. Or rather, the beliefs imputed by observers according to observed ac-
tions are often hard to reconcile with espoused beliefs. Wilson and Cooney con-
clude that reflection on beliefs is a central element in effective teacher education
and professional development programmes, and that it is even difficult to separate
the effects of teacher beliefs and teacher content knowledge (not to say pedagogic
content knowledge) on observed behavior and practices.
Lloyd reports on changes in teacher beliefs in the context of encountering new
reform curriculum materials (albeit within a climate of reform), while coming to
appreciate that a teacher’s view of a mathematical topic such as graphing is not
necessarily shared by all the learners. Perhaps reform provides a supportive con-
text within which listening to learners produces the disturbance necessary to trig-
ger reflection and enquiry, leading to changing articulation of beliefs. Hart reports
that amongst a group of primary teachers who had met sporadically over an ex-
tended period after attending professional development, most believed that collab-
oration with others, including colleagues in the project, and opportunities to expe-
rience for themselves what was being advocated, were the significant factors in
their own development. She uses a triad of model, experience, reflect as the frame-
work for working with teachers, which is resonant with a widely employed struc-
ture: experience for oneself at one’s own level, reflection on experience of pro-
cesses, and then application to your own situation in classrooms.
Chapman studies in detail a small number of secondary teachers not involved in
professional development, and found that the belief structure (concerning mathe-
matics) built up slowly over time, centered on a pedagogical view of mathematics
as, like play, something that needed to be experienced repeatedly. She concludes
that to support teachers it is necessary not only to understand what they believe but
also how those beliefs are held: the belief structure within which they operate.
Llinares takes a situated cognition perspective to analyze ways in which teachers’
knowledge and beliefs intertwine to influence both participation and reification of
mathematical processes. Philippou and Christou consider efficacy beliefs of some
primary teachers with differing backgrounds in educational institutions, finding
several novice teachers who were overoptimistic about teaching efficacy, and that
this quickly becomes tempered as they start teaching, and then develops overtime.
Lerman summarizes the section, observing that all of the chapters indicate a re-
ciprocal relationship between beliefs and practice. He then develops the theme of
how teachers are positioned within a traditional performance model, but may be
able to reposition themselves within other models, such as facilitation. He links the
performance model with traditional teaching supported by behaviorist perspec-
tives, with the teacher transmitting knowledge and strongly framing learner expe-
rience, in contrast to a competence model that can take various forms, including
liberal-progressive, populist (ethnomathematical) and emancipatory forms, based
respectively on constructivist, sociological, and critical theories, with correspond-
ingly weak framing as the teacher acts as facilitator or coordinator. He then asks
350 MASON

what the influence is of the variety of experiences engaged in by the teachers re-
ported upon in the various chapters (and in other authors not included in the book).
He presses for a sociological account as at least an alternative discourse for analy-
sis of how beliefs operate and change.

BELIEFS APPLIED TO LEARNERS

The six chapters in this final section provide refreshing access to learners’ voices
that contrast with the theories in the first section and extracts from teacher voices in
the second section. Kloosterman investigates learner affect and motivation, and
ties these to beliefs. Greer, Verschaffel, and de Corte study learner beliefs about the
nature and purpose of word problems, and how the necessary suspension of
sense-making by using the context comes about through beliefs about classroom
culture and the word problem game. Their stance is to advocate word problems as
opportunities to model, and so to challenge silly contexts. Presmeg studies ways in
which beliefs about the nature of mathematics itself (amongst high school students
and novice teachers) constrain the forging of links between familiar everyday prac-
tices and mathematical concepts. She employs a semiotic framework to encourage
learners to link personal experience with abstract ideas, finding that a majority of
them did broaden their conceptions. Yackel and Rasmussen explain how changes
in beliefs can be initiated and fostered through coordinating sociological and psy-
chological perspectives. Tsamir and Tirosh study beliefs and awareness about the
mathematical problem of dividing by zero. Even those learners who said division
by zero was undefined often expressed intuitions that there ought to be an answer,
or reached their conclusion by actually dividing by zero and getting infinity or zero
as the answer. Deeply held beliefs and intuitions are highly resistant to change, as
Fischbein (1987) proposed.
Lester summarizes the section admirably, and then goes on to distinguish be-
tween internally-focused research (concerned with meeting academic criteria such
as method and epistemology) and externally-focused research (stimulating teach-
ers and politicians to sit up and notice, and to act on the basis of the findings). One
example might be that beliefs are more usefully seen as internal knowledge rather
than as distinct from knowledge.

METABELIEFS AND METACOMMENTS

Even though it is difficult to pin down what you mean when you use the word be-
lief, once you start reflecting on experience it is difficult to avoid locating themes
or structures which help make sense of that experience, help to categorize and to
account for what is recalled. These structures have much of the flavor of beliefs.
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Indeed, Dewey is well known for setting down his Credo concerning education,
with just a hint of resonance with the American Declaration of Independence: the
warrants for our actions are the following beliefs … . Thus, beliefs are often used
to justify. A salutary exercise for groups of teachers is to try to block out their own
crede regarding teaching and learning mathematics: it proves to be more difficult
than first appears and just as Dewey found, it leads into more general areas of so-
cial concerns.
That what each person believes provides them with a fulcrum for trying to un-
derstand and even alter some aspect of mathematics education and that beliefs
drive behavior, could be considered as metabeliefs: beliefs about beliefs. Perhaps
beliefs are not the generators of action. Perhaps they are the result of reflecting on
actions and attempting to justify them. Providing warrants, being accountable, be-
ing responsible (answerable, accountable) produces some starting points, almost
like axioms, which are then declared to be beliefs. In other words, beliefs might be
the foundations for warrants that people offer when asked to account for their ac-
tions. This then translates into beliefs as constructs formulated by observers and at-
tributed to those they are observing, to account for observed actions.
Lester raises the problem that if beliefs are hidden, how can you demonstrate
that they are present, or that they drive behavior? He quotes Kath Hart addressing
PME as past-president: “Do I know what I believe? Do I believe what I know?”,
which he adjusts to “do students know what they believe?” indicating that he re-
mains skeptical about this and about whether interviews and observations, and
even self-reports provide reliable access to beliefs. I have to say that I share his
skepticism. Perhaps further work stimulated by this comprehensive survey will
make further progress in this direction.

REFERENCES

Bachelard, G. (1938). La Formation de l’esprit scientifique. Paris: J. Vrin.

Belenky, M., Clinchy, B., Goldberger, N., & Tarule, J. (1986). Women’s ways of knowing: The develop-
ment of self, voice and mind. New York: Basic Books.
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: MacMillan.
Fischbein, E. (1987). Intuition in science and mathematics: An educational approach. Dordecht, Hol-
land: Reidel.
Frankenstein, M. (1989). Relearning mathematics: A different R–radical math(s). London: Free Asso-
ciation.
Freudenthal, H. (1973). Mathematics as an educational task. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel.
Lerman, S. (1993). The role of the teacher in children’s mathematics. In A. Bishop, K. Hart, S. Lerman,
& T. Nunes (Eds.), Significant influences on children’s learning of mathematics. (Science and Tech-
nology, Vol. 47). Paris: UNESCO.
Mellin-Olsen, S. (1987). The politics of mathematics education. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel.
Open University. (1982). PME233: Real problem solving, Open University Course, Milton Keynes,
England.
352 MASON

Perry, W. (1968). Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years: A scheme. New
York: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston.
Shulman, L. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge and growth in teaching. Educational Re-
searcher, 15(2), 4–14.
Thompson, A. (1984). The relationship of teacher’s conceptions of mathematics and mathematics
teaching to instructional practice. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 15(2), 105–127.
Thompson, A. (1992). Teachers beliefs and conceptions: A synthesis of the research. In D. Grouws
(Ed.), Handbook of research on mathematics learning and teaching (pp. 127–146). New York:
MacMillan.