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This article reports on a research project relating to the newly implemented mandatory Swedish national mathematics tests for third-grade students (nine and ten years old). The project's main research concerns the students' ideas about and reactions toward these tests and how the specific test situation affects their perception of their own mathematical proficiency. Drawing on theories that suggest identities are more fluid than static, we want to understand how students with special needs are "created." The specific aim of this article is to discuss how our research methods have been refined during the various phases of data collection and report on the resulting implications. It discusses issues surrounding child research and how methods involving video recording and video stimulated recall dialogue (VSRD) can contribute to research on children's experiences. Particular attention is given to methodological and ethical issues and how to disrupt power relations. In this article, we argue that the context of the test situation not only impacted upon the students but also affected how we changed, developed, and adapted our approaches as the project evolved.

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This article builds upon a systematic review of 53 articles in international research journals and makes three main contributions. First, it develops a method for identifying motives, values, and assumptions in research by analysing segments of text in journal articles. Second, it represents a reflective account of research within the field of mathematics education. Third, it captures the ongoing directions of intentionalities inherent in the diverse field of special education mathematics and, thereby, some of the characteristics of the core issues in this field. Three directions of intentionalities were identified: towards teachers and teaching competence, towards enhanced mathematical achievement, and towards every student's learning. The results indicate that each direction has specific limitations and potentials. In order to improve special education mathematics, we recommend that researchers and practitioners remain broadly informed and involved in all three directions of intentionalities.

Multilingual students' participation in national tests in mathematics-discursive prerequisites. This article explores discursive prerequisites in test-taking for second language learners with other mother tongues than Swedish. Four students were interviewed in 2016 during their final year of compulsory school. The results imply that multilingual students are positioned as disadvantaged within testing. This phenomenon is mainly situated in a competitive discourse with several subordinated discourses that further position the students: A discourse of justice positioned the students as being sorted or left behind, a discourse of handling the assessment positioned the students as caretakers and a discourse of future challenges positioned the students as struggling while learning, being capable to learn or facing positive challenges. The results imply that national testing is a personal and relational experience and gives rise to issues of legitimacy and equality. These issues should be considered in policy-making, the construction and the carrying out of tests as well as in the conclusions which are based on the results on individual, group and organisational levels.

Discourses on Inclusion in Media. This article explores discourses on inclusion in articles about education in Sweden's four largest newspapers, and how these discourses position children, students, teachers, and schools. The findings indicate that the journalistic practices of agendization, accountabilization, factualization, emphasizing, and sensationalization have impacted arguments and increased the newsworthiness of the subject. Inclusion is often discussed in a sporadic and inconsistent way and students and teachers are often positioned out of a deficit perspective. Discourses were demarcated on three interrelated levels: an individual level, an organisational level, and a societal level.

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