Maintaining Standards: A Foucauldian Historical Analysis of the NCTM Standards Movement

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' Standards documents represent the most recent and most enduring reform movement in mathematics education. These documents have formed a discourse that has guided mathematics education through the 1990s and beyond. This study uses Foucault's archaeology and genealogy and his concept of the author function to explore Standards-based mathematics education as a discursive formation and the complex power relations that made it possible for the formation to become The discourse of school mathematics. Data for the exploration includes the Standards documents, earlier histories of the NCTM Standards movement, literature surrounding the documents, and oral history interviews with several of the writers of the NCTM documents.