Language Practices In School Mathematics

With a view to contributing to understanding the nature and role of language in mathematics education, this book examines spoken language practices. The book demonstrates that learning mathematics is very much a matter of learning to speak 'properly.' There is a pervasive and continual requirement, often hidden in everyday classroom practices, to shift towards increasingly mathematical language. The outcomes of the research reported here affirm the value of viewing language and mathematics learning from a social semiotic perspective and help further our understandings about the construction of a social semiotic theory of classroom education, both in school mathematics and across the curriculum.

This book offers an international perspective on the current and future state of the research, focusing, in particular, on the role and use of language in mathematics school teaching and learning. It focuses on the development of a unified view of the languages of the learners, of the teachers and of mathematics by considering the role of language in the learning, teaching and doing of mathematics in the classroom, and the current richness and plurality of language and culture. The contributions in this volume combine to show how views of language and of language research in mathematics education have changed significantly in recent decades, and how they will continue to change and become even more complex and challenging in the era of diversity. All of these contributions by leading scholars are grouped into two sections for emphasis on issues of: • Theorising the complexity of language in mathematics teaching and learning • Opening spaces of learning with mathematics classroom research on language This book will be of great interest to mathematics teachers, teacher educators, curriculum developers and mathematics education researchers who deal with the study and implementation of pedagogies of mathematics teaching and learning, specifically in regions of the world which are culturally and sociolinguistically diverse.

A volume in Research in Mathematics Education Series Editor Barbara J. Dougherty, Iowa State University Marketing description: Issues of language in mathematics learning and teaching are important for both practical and theoretical reasons. Addressing issues of language is crucial for improving mathematics learning and teaching for students who are bilingual, multilingual, or learning English. These issues are also relevant to theory: studies that make language visible provide a complex perspective of the role of language in reasoning and learning mathematics. What is the relevant knowledge base to consider when designing research studies that address issues of language in the learning and teaching of mathematics? What scholarly literature is relevant and can contribute to research? In order to address issues of language in mathematics education, researchers need to use theoretical perspectives that integrate current views of mathematics learning and teaching with current views on language, discourse, bilingualism, and second language acquisition. This volume contributes to the development of such integrated approaches to research on language issues in mathematics education by describing theoretical perspectives for framing the study of language issues and methodological issues to consider when designing research studies. The volume provides interdisciplinary reviews of the research literature from four very different perspectives: mathematics education (Moschkovich), Cultural-Historical-Activity Theory (Gutierrez, Sengupta-Irving, & Dieckmann), systemic functional linguistics (Schleppegrell), and assessment (Solano-Flores). This volume offers graduate students and researchers new to the study of language in mathematics education an introduction to resources for conceptualizing, framing, and designing research studies. For those already involved in examining language issues, the volume provides useful and critical reviews of the literature as well as recommendations for moving forward in designing research. Lastly, the volume provides a basis for dialogue across multiple research communities engaged in collaborative work to address these pressing issues.

Concerned with various aspects of language in mathematics education, this book aims to reveal some of the ambiguities and complexities in the way language is used in the mathematics curriculum. It aims to present current perspectives and review key issues in mathematics education.

Contemporary concerns in mathematics education recognize that in the increasingly technological and globalized world, with concomitant change in population demographics (e.g. immigration, urbanization) and a change in the status of languages (e.g. English as a dominant language of science and technology) multilingualism in classrooms is a norm rather than an exception. Shifts in perspective also view language not simply as an instrument for cognition with all learners equipped with this instrument in service of learning, although clearly in the classroom that remains of importance. Rather, it is now also being acknowledged that language use is inherently political, so that the language that gets official recognition in the classroom is invariably the language of the powerful elite, or the dominant societal language, or in the case of post-colonial contexts the language of the colonisers. From this socio-political role of language in learning quite different issues arise for teaching, learning and curriculum for linguistically marginalized learners than that of cognition (e.g. immigrants, second language learners, other). Policies on language in education are being considered and re-considered with specific reference to mathematics teaching and learning. Given the policy environment, globally the proposed publication is timely. This edited collection draws on recent, emerging insights and understandings about the approaches to improving policy and practice in mathematics education and mathematics teacher education in multilingual settings. It presents, and discusses critically, examples of work from a range of contexts and uses these examples to draw out key issues for research in education in language diverse settings including teaching, learning, curriculum and fit these with appropriate policy and equity approaches. With contributions from all over the world, especially novice researchers in low income countries, this book is a valuable resource for courses in Mathematics Education and related social sciences both at the graduate and undergraduate levels, as well as for students of international development.

The author captures three inter-related dilemmas that lie at the heart of teaching mathematics in multilingual classrooms: code-switching, mediation, and transparency. She provides a sharp analysis and strong theoretical grounding, pulling together research related to the relationship between language and mathematics, communicating mathematics, and mathematics in bi-/multilingual settings and offers a direct challenge to dominant research on communication in mathematics classrooms.

This edited book is about preparing pre-service and in-service teachers to teach secondary-level mathematics to English Language Learners (ELLs) in twenty-first century classrooms. Chapter topics are grounded in both research and practice, addressing a range of timely topics including the current state of ELL education in the secondary mathematics classroom, approaches to leveraging the talents and strengths of bilingual students in heterogeneous classrooms, best practices in teaching mathematics to multilingual students, and ways to infuse the secondary mathematics teacher preparation curriculum with ELL pedagogy. This book will appeal to all teachers of ELLs, teacher educators and researchers of language acquisition more broadly. This volume is part of a set of four edited books focused on teaching the key content areas to English language learners. The other books in the set focus on teaching History and Social Studies, English Language Arts, and Science to ELLs.

Using strengths-based approaches to support development in mathematics It’s time to re-imagine what’s possible and celebrate the brilliance multilingual learners bring to today’s classrooms. Innovative teaching strategies can position these learners as leaders in mathematics. Yet, as the number of multilingual learners in North American schools grows, many teachers have not had opportunities to gain the competencies required to teach these learners effectively, especially in disciplines such as mathematics. Multilingual learners—historically called English Language Learners—are expected to interpret the meaning of problems, analyze, make conjectures, evaluate their progress, and discuss and understand their own approaches and the approaches of their peers in mathematics classrooms. Thus, language plays a vital role in mathematics learning, and demonstrating these competencies in a second (or third) language is a challenging endeavor. Based on best practices and the authors’ years of research, this guide offers practical approaches that equip grades K-8 teachers to draw on the strengths of multilingual learners, partner with their families, and position these learners for success. Readers will find: • A focus on multilingual students as leaders • A strength-based approach that draws on students’ life experiences and cultural backgrounds • An emphasis on maintaining high expectations for learners’ capacity for mastering rigorous content • Strategies for representing concepts in different formats • Stop and Think questions throughout and reflection questions at the end of each chapter • Try It! Implementation activities, student work examples, and classroom transcripts With case studies and activities that provide a solid foundation for teachers’ growth and exploration, this groundbreaking book will help teachers and teacher educators engage in meaningful, humanized mathematics instruction.