The present research study focuses on how the language of instruction has an impact on the mathematical thinking development as a consequence of using a language of instruction different from the students’ mother tongue. In CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) academic content and a foreign language are leant at the same time, a methodology that is widely used in the schools in the present times. It is, therefore, our main aim to study if the language of instruction in second language immersion programs influences the development of the first formal mathematical concepts. More specifically, if the learning of mathematical concepts in the early ages develops in a similar way if it is taught in the students’ mother tongue and is not influenced by the language used for teaching. Or else, if it can influence the development of the first skills only in the students’ general performance or in certain areas. The results of both the analysis of variance and multiple regression confirm how influencing the language of instruction is when mathematical thinking is developed teaching formal contents in a non-coincidence language. The second language is affecting the resolution of daily life problems, being more competent those students in 1st grades whose language of instruction matched with their mother tongue.

Teaching mathematics and improving mathematics competence are pending subjects within our educational system. The PEIM (Programa Evolutivo Instruccional para Matemáticas), a constructivist intervention program for the improvement of mathematical performance, affects the different agents involved in math learning, guaranteeing a significant improvement in students’ performance. The program is based on the following pillars: (a) students become the main agents of their learning by constructing their own knowledge; (b) the teacher must be the guide to facilitate and guarantee such a construction by being a great connoisseur of the fundamental aspects of the development of the child’s mathematical thinking; (c) the mathematical contents must be sequenced in terms of the complexity and significance for the student as well as contextualized at all times; and (d) the classroom must have a constructivist climate highlighting cooperative work among students. The implementation of PEIM along with the empirical evaluation conducted in several centers in Madrid and Zaragoza (Spain) confirm how students improve their mathematical competence. Both first- and second-grade students in elementary education were far more effective in solving problems, highlighting the use of more advanced strategies in their resolution and a lower incidence of conceptual errors. Moreover, it was possible to verify how the students proving greater difficulty, experienced an evolution in learning similarly to those who did not present it. The program provides customized education to allow the teacher to know at all times how he should be more influential on the students’ learning through mathematical profiles. Both teaching practice and teachers were observed, being that of the experimental group more prone to analyzing processes and allowing the construction of knowledge by students, due to their psycho-developmental training. As a result, we found several improvements through the implementation of the program that may serve, for upcoming years, as a basis for the necessary changes in the teaching of mathematics.

Content analysis, extensive search in the literature.

With the arrival of the pandemic, many education students in higher education classrooms saw how their internships were cancelled, making it impossible for them to access real contexts that would let them know how their everyday professional life would be. Consequently, it was necessary to make a methodological change. To bridge the gap between theoretical and practical training, we conducted an educational experience at a private university where several educational videos were used to reflect the implementation of different educational methodologies in teaching mathematics by expert teachers. In the recorded practices, it was shown how four different methodologies were implemented in several contexts during the day-to-day classes: International Baccalaureate (IB), gamification, flipped classroom and project-based learning. We studied each methodology to measure their impact on primary students’ learning and guarantee that higher education students had visualized effective practices through micro-videos. The results of our study show that, in certain aspects of mathematics, the students’ own teaching capabilities have greater influence than the theoretical methodological instruction they generally receive in the classroom. Further, concerning students’ perceptions, we can conclude that their motivation increased towards the use of micro-videos, since they became active agents of their own learning.

The main aim of the present study is to analyze the differences that may exist when students address the resolution of verbal problems in their mother tongue and in the language of instruction when these are different. We understand that knowing the type of verbal problems and their semantic structure can be helpful for students’ contextual and mathematical understanding and will allow teachers to improve instruction during the first years of elementary education in bilingual schools specialized in the area of second language acquisition as well as in CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning). This study shows how children, as they are acquiring a greater command of the second language, show similar effectiveness to those students who work on mathematics in their mother tongue. This transversal study was conducted on 169 bilinguals studying in international schools. The sample was made up of 80 1st grade students (39 girls, mean age of 7.1 years and 41 boys, mean age of 7.3 years); and 89 2nd grade students (38 girls, mean age 8.2 years, and 51 boys, mean age 8.2 years). The exploratory analyses let us show how 1st grade students demonstrate lower effectiveness in solving problems when they do it in a second language, compared to 2nd grade students whose effectiveness is higher in carrying them out. It is also relevant that in first graders, the largest number of errors are found in the simplest tasks as students’ effectiveness is less when they are taught in a second language, since it takes them longer to create effective resolution models. This fact will allow us to reconsider appropriate strategies and interventions when teaching mathematics in bilingual contexts.