Investigating and promoting teachers’ expertise for language-responsive mathematics teaching

Abstract

In spite of the widely accepted need for language-responsive subject-matter teaching, few teachers are prepared for this challenge due to the lack of empirically founded subject-specific professional development (PD) programs for language-responsive classrooms. The design research study presented in this article pursues the dual aim of (a) promoting teachers' expertise in language-responsive mathematics teaching using PD courses and (b) investigating teachers' developing expertise in qualitative case studies. Both aims are pursued based on a conceptual framework for teacher expertise in language-responsive mathematics teaching, starting from typical situational demands that teachers face in language-responsive mathematics teaching and the orientations, categories, and pedagogical tools they need to cope with these situational demands, especially the demand to identify mathematically relevant language demands. For language-responsive teaching, the interplay of categories for mathematical goals and language goals turns out to be of high relevance. Keywords Teacher expertise. Language-responsive mathematics. Individual use of categories. Design research for teachers For nearly 40 years, research has pointed to challenges in linguistically diverse classrooms (Austin and Howson 1979; Ellerton and Clarkson 1996). Until now, language proficiency in school academic language has been a crucial factor with a high impact on mathematics achievement (Secada 1992; Haag et al. 2013; Marshman

Language as an including or excluding factor in mathematics teaching and learning

“…Some models of bilingual education academics(Setati and Adler 2000;Setati et al 2009), Australasian academics(Clarkson 2009; Edmonds-Wathen 2017; Meaney et al 2017; Jorgensen 2018), European academics(Planas 2018;Prediger 2019) and academics working in the USA (see, for example, Moschkovich 2010; Civil 2018).…”

Editorial

“…Given the importance of language both in education (Prediger, 2019;Smit, Bakker, Van Eerde, & Kuijpers, 2016) and research (Meaney, 2013), we encourage authors quoting data in languages other than English to include the original transcripts where they are of added value. The number of words in these original languages can be subtracted from the total word count.…”

Which research can support PD facilitators? Strategies for content-related PD research in the Three-Tetrahedron Model

“…PD research rather emphasizes the direction from the top to the bottom, for example, by deducing, postulating, and initiating processes and investigating their effects on different levels. As a synthesis, PD design research iteratively combines the bottom-up and top-down directions (Prediger 2019).…”

“…Thereby, design elements such as structured or unstructured video clubs can be based on findings on the TPD level (van Es and Sherin 2008). • Research approaches for investigating students' conceptions and learning pathways for a specific mathematical content (by interview studies or design experiments) can be lifted to the PD level by investigating teachers' conceptions and learning pathways for a specific PD content area such as language responsiveness in mathematics classrooms (e.g., Smit and van Eerde 2011;Prediger 2019). This resonates with the call for more process focus for teacher learning pathways by Goldsmith et al (2014).…”

“…By considering the interplay of research and design, we particularly emphasize their connections: PD design should be informed by research; hence, we talk about research-based PD design. Vice versa, PD research is always contextualized by the specific design of the PD, and we talk about design-based PD research when the design is considered as an important part of the work of the researchers and is systematically included in the research activities (Cobb et al 2003;Prediger 2019).…”