At the core of mathematics education lies the development of students’ mathematical thinking. In classroom research, opportunities for such thinking can be conceptualized through cognitive activation, which entails practices that support students’ engagement with challenging tasks, subject discourse, and reasoning. The aim of this thesis is to explore cognitive activation as a multidimensional opportunity structure in mathematics classrooms, focusing on intended, enacted, and experienced opportunities, and on how students’ experienced opportunities relate to self-efficacy, test anxiety, and mathematical achievement.

The thesis consists of four empirical papers conducted in Swedish secondary mathematics education. It examines classroom-level and individually perceived cognitive activation in relation to self-efficacy, test anxiety, and achievement. Furthermore, it explores teachers’ intended facilitation in lesson plans involving a challenging task, and how observed instructional features co-occur to form lesson segment types across lessons and classrooms. 

 The findings show that cognitive activation can be understood as an opportunity structure constituted by interrelated dimensions, including task and interaction demands, teachers’ facilitation, and subject discourse. Experienced cognitive activation was positively associated with self-efficacy, and self-efficacy may mediate the relation between cognitive activation and achievement. Teachers’ facilitation of challenging tasks, analysed as regulation of learning, varied across planned instructional events, and enacted opportunities formed distinct lesson segment types in terms of cognitive activation and instructional clarity, working format, and lesson phase.

Overall, the thesis contributes to how cognitive activation can be theorised and studied as a multidimensional opportunity structure, and offers insights into how it can inform teachers’ didactical decision-making.

Mathematical thinking is central in mathematics education. Opportunities for such thinking can be conceptualized through cognitive activation: practices that support students’ engagement with challenging tasks, subject discourse, and reasoning. This thesis explores intended, enacted, and experienced opportunities of cognitive activation, and their relation to self-efficacy, test anxiety, and achievement. 

Across four empirical papers in Swedish secondary education, the thesis examines classroom-level and individually perceived cognitive activation, teachers’ intended facilitation of a challenging task, and observed segment types across lessons and classrooms.

Findings show that cognitive activation is constituted by interrelated dimensions, including task and interaction demands, teachers’ facilitation, and subject discourse. Experienced cognitive activation was positively associated with self-efficacy, which may mediate between cognitive activation and achievement. Planned facilitation varied across instructional events, and observed lesson segments differed in cognitive activation and instructional clarity. 

Overall, the thesis contributes to theorising and studying cognitive activation as a multidimensional opportunity structure and offers insights for didactical decision-making.