Title: Conflicting Discourses, conflicting values

Abstract: Research designed to elicit middle-school mathematics teachers ’ perceptions of connections between in-school and out-of-school mathematical reasoning revealed an unexpected clash. The teacher participants gave evidence of valuing both student efficiency and student understanding, but the simultaneous salience of those values was positioned by the teachers as problematic. Rather than viewing efficiency and understanding as complementary aspects of mathematics learning and doing, teachers spoke of the two values as conflicting and in opposition to one another. Considerable research indicates that students demonstrate mathematical knowledge outside of the classroom that may not be equally well demonstrated within the classroom setting (e.g. Saxe, 1988; Nunes, Schliemann, & Carraher, 1993; Nasir, 2002). In order to develop more equitable learning environments, teachers must acknowledge that students bring informal mathematical knowledge to the classroom, and that such knowledge should be built upon when teaching (Carpenter & Lehrer, 1999). Staples and Hand (under review) found that a factor in creating equitable reform classrooms may be the expansion of what teachers accept as mathematical contributions from students, which emphasizes the importance of teachers ’ beliefs in what mathematics is and how it is done. In this study, an emergent theme indicated that the teachers perceived