Maiken Westen Holm Svendsen defends her PhD dissertation on March 25, 2026.

Maiken Westen Holm Svendsen defends her PhD dissertation Towards a More Coherent Evaluation Culture in Mathematics at HTX on Wednesday, March 25, 2026, from 13:00 to 16:00. In connection with the defense, she will give a public lecture titled "Towards a More Coherent Evaluation Culture in Mathematics at HTX – STEM Modules Between Learning, Competence, and Knowledge".

How do we actually determine what counts as “good” mathematical proficiency in upper secondary education?

That question is central to Maiken Westen Holm Svendsen’s PhD dissertation, which offers a new perspective on assessment in mathematics at HTX. 

Instead of viewing assessment as a neutral measurement of students’ knowledge, the dissertation shows how assessment in practice shapes both teaching and students’ academic opportunities.

A break with the traditional view of assessment

In many educational contexts, assessment is described as something objective—a neutral way to determine whether the student “knows the material.” 

Maiken Westen Holm Svendsen’s research challenges this understanding. She argues that assessment is always situated, relational, and co-constructive, and therefore helps define what appears as legitimate mathematical proficiency and which student expressions are given space.

The dissertation draws on a posthumanist and new materialist philosophy of science inspired by Karen Barad’s agential realism (the idea that the world and knowledge are created through relationships between humans and materials) and Andrew Pickering’s understanding of practice. Based on this, Svendsen develops a performative paradigm in which assessment is not seen as a reflection of pre-existing knowledge, but as something that emerges through interactions between students, teachers, artefacts, and teaching materials. In the study, she uses diffractive analysis (an approach where materials are read through one another to identify differences and new patterns, rather than comparing them one-to-one)—a method that makes it possible to discover shifts, patterns, and processes of materialization in new ways.

A postmodern perspective on mathematics teaching

The empirical part of the dissertation is based on cases from LabSTEM+ at HTX, where teaching and assessment situations are analyzed as “toy systems.” They function as small, experimental spaces of practice where subject knowledge, materials, and expectations are connected in ways that highlight certain forms of mathematical expression while others fade into the background.

Here, Maiken Westen Holm Svendsen shows how even small changes in format, materials, or task understanding can alter which forms of mathematics students are able to express—verbally, in writing, physically, or affectively.

New conceptual tools for teachers and researchers

A broader and more important perspective on what mathematics can be

Maiken Westen Holm Svendsen’s research shows that assessment is not a final control mechanism, but an active part of the development of the subject. By understanding assessment as a performative practice, it opens up more inclusive and diverse ways of seeing and evaluating students’ mathematical work.