Mathematics education and genre: Dare we make the process writing mistake again?

Abstract The process writing movement in language education has informed current moves towards process methods in mathematics pedagogy. This has led to limited expectations of narrative recounts in students’ writing about mathematics. An examination of primary and secondary mathematics classes and commonly‐used textbooks shows that genre expectations are both limited and limiting. Given that mathematics is text, and that mathematicians need to operate competently within a number of different genres, it is argued that teachers should broaden the scope of task specification so that a wider range of mathematical genres is experienced in classrooms. This paper examines a number of mathematical genres that are accessible to students.