School Academic Language Demands for Understanding Functional Relationships: A Design Research Project on the Role of Language in Reading and Learning

Abstract

Acquiring conceptual understanding of functions is far from being trivial for most students, especially language learners. The article reports on a design research project with students in Grades 8-11 (n = 94) that fostered academic language learners' development of conceptual understanding in the interplay of different semiotic representations. Theoretical and qualitative analyses of students' learning pathways and obstacles allowed the specification of school academic language demands based on concept demands for dealing with functional relationships. The strong interplay between concept and language demands can be described by the correspondence of conceptual compaction of conceptual facets and the language-related condensation of their verbalizations.

Vocabulary in learning processes towards conceptual understanding of equivalent fractions—specifying students’ language demands on the basis of lexical trace analyses

“…Potential rather general pitfalls of the mathematical register have been well described theoretically for both English (e.g., overview in O'Halloran 2015; Thompson and Rubenstein 2000;Pimm 1987) and German (see Niederhaus et al 2016). For the German language, connectors such as prepositional phrases or conjunctions have been identified as crucial for mathematical learning, especially for developing a conceptual understanding (Prediger and Zindel 2017). One explanation for this phenomenon draws upon the specifics of mathematics: "The grammatical patterning of mathematics often presents processes as if they were things by construing them as nouns and noun phrases" (Schleppegrell 2007, p.146).…”

Fostering the Mathematics Learning of Language Learners: Introduction to Trends and Issues in Research and Professional Development

“…The language demands in mathematics classrooms have to be specified more holistically by starting from the text level with subject-specific genres (Rezat & Rezat, 2017) or from the discourse level by starting with topic-specific discourse practices (like explaining meanings of the mathematical topic 'functional relationships', Prediger & Zindel, 2017). This is consequently done in the SIOP model described by Short (2017).…”

“… Language learning for increasing mathematics achievement cannot be separated from mathematics learning (Hagena et al, 2017), instead, language and content integrated approaches are necessary (Short, 2017;Prediger & Zindel, 2017;Schüler-Meyer, 2017;Rezat & Rezat, 2017). …”

“…o Quantitative methods are applied by Hagena et al (2017) and Short (2017) for providing quantitative evidence for the (non-)effectiveness of approaches, o The others investigate the initiated teaching learning processes qualitatively (Schüler-Meyer, 2017;Prediger & Zindel, 2017;Lange & Meaney, 2017), showing the complexities  of the connection between language and mathematics (Prediger & Zindel, 2017),  of student learning in interaction (Schüler-Meyer, 2017)  and of teacher learning (Lange & Meaney, 2017).…”

Cooperation Model of Sports Education for Aged – Project “Really Fit from 50” in Germany as an Example

“…The project programme of the Berlin Sports education Federation was widely welcomed, in the end, more than 500 people participated in 55 courses (Prediger & Zindel, 2017), such as governments, nurseries, clinics, a commercial rehabilitation agency, and a Chamber of commerce interested in cooperation, and later there was a shortfall in demand, which was sufficient evidence that Berlin's choice of partnership with health and community was promising.…”