The overall intent of the case study which form the emergent backdrop of the paper, is to meet the requests for studies where researchers include the voices of the participants, including themselves, in order to learn and understand from their (own) experiences and expectations (see e.g. Burton, 1994; Corbett & Wilson, 1995). The study is a picture-drawing and story-telling case study as it aims at offering the reader theoretical insights by combining descriptive and narrative accounts of the exploration and analysis of the case (Bassey, 1999). Theoretically the study is inspired by social and sociocultural perspectives. It understands utterances of persons in interviews and other occasions as socially mediated and thus cannot in the analysis be used as a window into the minds of the persons (Jablonka, 2008). The “case “ in the case study is the emerging school mathematical practices at a local setting, a lower secondary school in the Swedish speaking part of Finland where a group of teachers during three years acted as action-researchers and collaborative developers of issues related to their mathematics teaching. The teachers were inspired a priori by theories of learning based on constructivism. My own role as participant in this process fluctuated between insider-outsider positions (Gold, 1958) as I took part in the process as research-assistant within a commissioned research work including a complex set of tasks, among them to bring the voices of students into the reform work. Also, the students can thus be defined as participants in the action-research process because results from my preliminary interpretations of student interviews where shared with the teachers. The unit of analysis in the case study is the meanings of the school mathematical practices as experienced by the participants in these practices. With school mathematical practices I denote all social in-of-school and out-of –school actions where aspects related to school mathematics can be considered as more or less visible/invisible from the perspectives of the participants. As an example, the meanings of homework in mathematics relates not only to the work as such but also to the mathematical histories of significant others like familymembers. The main research question addressed iin the paper is: What experiences from participation in school mathematical practices are students expressing during and after lower secondary school?

The paper foregrounds the voices of three student participants, two girls and one boy who where positioned as "good/excellent" mathematically at the end of elementary school. The students participants expressed their experiences and expectations in five semi-structured individual interviews during lower secondary school. The results are based on a critical re-analysis of these interviews and on backward-looking open conversations with the three students as adults. The traces of school mathematical practices have emerged out of an open coding approach with attention both to theories regarding school mathematical practices in literature and to new aspects and emerging out of repeated listening to the interviews and reading of the transcripts (Bryman, 2002). In the analysis I have looked critically at all interviews in a holistic way and I have taken each student’s interpretations into account by listening closely both to WHAT the student is saying and HOW it is said.

In short, the three students paint a unison picture of usual school mathematics as a well thought-out, teacher-controlled and task dominated system with a prescribed linear diet of lessons followed by lessons where “rules” are introduced and explained by the teacher with the help of examples and exercises. This structure is described by the some as marginalizing and alienating. It does not afford legitimate social space for mathematical explorations. And furthermore, as usual school mathematics is an individualistic affair where secure knowing, the aim of the whole enterprise, is best guaranteed by concentrated listening followed by working quietly with textbook tasks. However, as will be discussed in the paper, the structure may be less marginalizing for students that express a stronger sense of belonging and acceptance .