Language diversity and mathematics education: new developments

Abstract

Language diversity and mathematics education: new developments Language diversity has become a feature of education more or less everywhere. The idea of the unilingual nation state is being steadily eroded in the places where it did exist, with minority language speakers often claiming the right to education in their languages. Internal and external migration is leading to superdiverse classrooms in urban centres around the world. The ability to live and work in multiple languages is seen more and more as a social and economic asset. This shiftas much a change of awareness as a sociolinguistic or demographic onehas important implications for education. If language rights are recognised, what is the consequence for mathematics education? What issues arise in teaching mathematics in minority language contexts? Or plurilingual contexts? If mobility and superdiversity are prevalent, what is the consequence for mathematics teaching? Or the preparation of mathematics teachers? Or mathematics curricula? The domain of research that focuses on mathematics education in relation to language diversity is starting to mature. In principle, this topic covers a wide range of situations arising in the context of societal multilingualism, migration, colonisation, Indigenisation, language immersion and education, and often several such situations at the same time. As little as twenty years ago, however, it was still possible to read all the extant literature on this topic, and the active researchers working on it would have fit round a large table. 1 In recent years, the maturing of the field is apparent in several respects. First, there has been a series of review activities and writings, including an International Commission in Mathematics Instruction (ICMI) Study and accompanying volume (Barwell et al., 2016), at least one new book (Halai & Clarkson, 2016), at least one journal issue (Prediger & Schüler-Meyer, 2017) and a handbook chapter (Barwell, Moschkovich, & Setati Phakeng, 2017). Conference activities on this theme have also gone from strength to strength; the contributions in this special issue of Research in Mathematics Education were all initially presented to Topic Study Group 31 on mathematics education in multicultural and multilingual contexts at the 2016 International Congress on Mathematics Education (ICME) in Hamburg. This expansion shows a field of research that is becoming more and more mainstream, as countries around the world wake up to the increasing diversity (or superdiversity) of their school systems, and turn to researchers to develop mathematics education practice, policy and curriculum in response. Second, a corollary; there are now many more researchers working on questions related to language diversity in mathematics education, from many more countries. For example, at a recent European Research in Mathematics Education (ERME) Working Conference held at the Technische Universität Dortmund, in Germany, there were researchers representing Germany,

Embodied mathematical pedagogy to liberate racialized and multilingual bodies

“…The issue of language and mathematics learning has garnered attention internationally in the field of mathematics education (e.g., Barwell et al, 2019 ; de Araujo et al, 2018 ; Moschkovich, 2015 ; Planas & Civil, 2013 ). A review conducted by Radford and Barwell ( 2016 ) pointed out a relative scarcity of studies working to transform knowledge production in the classroom toward “an emancipatory critical pedagogical agenda” (p. 306) as an alternative to the institutionalized colonialization of underrepresented students.…”

Povezovanje matematike z okoljem skozi ustvarjalno reševanje avtentičnih problemov

“…Raziskovalci Barwell (2011) ter Hoffmanova in Brahier ( 2008) za razvoj ustvarjalnega mišljenja svetujejo reševanje odprtih problemov. Pri odprtih problemih je problemska situacija postavljena kot izziv, pri katerem vprašanja niso jasno postavljena.…”

Examining the complexities of science education in multilingual contexts: highlighting international perspectives

“…Collectively, the papers in this special issue enhance our understandings of the complexity of multilingual science education and shed light on its intricacies within multilingual societies: intricacies that present both opportunities and challenges for plurilingual students and their teachers in multilingual contexts. A recent special issue in Research in Mathematics Education (July 2019) reflects a similar interest in examining the implications of language diversity for mathematics education, and the variety of teaching practices that develop and leverage diverse learners' language repertoires for deeper mathematics learning (Barwell et al, 2019).…”