Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment and Instruction in Mathematics

ACCLAIM's mission is the cultivation of indigenous leadership capacity for the improvement of school mathematics in rural places. The project aims to (1) understand the rural context as it pertains to learning and teaching mathematics and (2) articulate in scholarly works, including empirical research, the meaning and utility of that learning and teaching among, for, and by rural people. 0119679. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Précis ACCLAIM's mission is the cultivation of indigenous leadership capacity for the improvement of school mathematics in rural places. The project aims to (1) understand the rural context as it pertains to learning and teaching mathematics and (2) articulate in scholarly works, including empirical research, the meaning and utility of that learning and teaching among, for, and by rural people. 1 A " prolegomenon " is a " critical discussion serving to introduce and interpret an extended work " (Collegiate Dictionary). The word exactly fits the purpose of this essay, since the Appalachian Collaborative Center for Assessment, Instruction, and Learning (ACCLAIM) is very much an extended work. The essay that follows develops a tentative theoretical framework to help represent something of the intended purposes, commitments, and arguments of ACCLAIM's extended work. It is necessarily and intentionally incomplete, especially so, in fact, because it argues for a rural place-based perspective on mathematics education research and development. A Theory of Connected Works and Actions In The Human Condition, the philosopher Hannah Arendt (1959), working from classical perspectives, distinguished " work " from " action. " Works, in her account, were the physical products of craftsmanship: poems, furniture, useful objects, novels, and certainly, research reports. Actions, by contrast, produced no tangible and final products. According to Arendt, actions had no " outcomes. " Short of the final extermination of human life, in Arendt's view, every action must lead ceaselessly to another. Action was not only endless, it consisted mostly of speech. Action was not (as is now so often thought, especially among people concerned with schooling) principally behavior or movement, but rather face-to-face speech (see also, Habermas, 1987, on the role of speech in action). 1 A " prolegomenon " is an critical introduction to an extended work, and often serves in just the prospective sense as the present essay. 2 Confounding works and actions. …