“Beyond Right and Wrong: Textures of Mathematical Work in a High-Stakes South African Examination”

Abstract

The Grade 12 NSC Mathematics examination plays a decisive role in South African schooling, shaping who moves into further study and who does not. Much has been written about marks and performance trends, yet we know far less about how examinees actually produce their written mathematics under pressure. This article shifts the focus to the work itself and the small steps examinees take to hold difficult procedures together during the examination. This article moves beyond the binary of right and wrong by investigating the textures of mathematical work that emerge as examinees engage with the NSC examination. Drawing on an integrated ethnomethodological and Pickeringian analytic framework, the study analyses the lived work in the Grade 12 examination scripts as socio-material records of mathematical practice. Three aligned documentary datasets are examined to trace how examinees encounter resistance from mathematical structures and how accommodation is locally improvised through procedural reflexivity, reversal, targeting, and performative closure. A central finding across all three domains is the dominance of performative closure through the non-firing of resistance, where institutional demands for completion override epistemic resolution. The analysis reveals that examinees’ mathematical work unfolds not as a linear conceptual progression but as a fragile negotiation of resistance, accommodation and institutional stabilisation under severe time and accountability pressures. The article advances a sociological account of high-stakes school mathematics, showing how examination conditions actively reorganise what it becomes possible to display, value and recognise as mathematical knowledge. The findings carry important implications for mathematics teaching, assessment practice and teacher education in South Africa.