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Agency and positioning in a multilingual mathematics classroom

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Abstract

This paper draws on data from a first grade multilingual mathematics classroom in Sweden. I explore how students’ agency is pronounced in the classroom that actually can be a site where mathematics reform-oriented pedagogy thrives and how the emphasis on language support in such classrooms can support reform-oriented pedagogy. I argue that the emphasis on reform-oriented pedagogy can support the learning of mathematics and a second language, simultaneously. By analysing discursive practices, I show how this supportive relationship operates alongside the on-going processes of normalisation whereby students’ mother tongues continue to be erased or ignored.

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Notes

  1. In English: National Agency of Education

  2. According to Barwell (2009) a multilingual classroom is any classroom where more than one language can be used, and of course, classrooms where more than one language is used.

  3. Not to be seen as something situated in a person from birth.

  4. Integration of subject content knowledge and language learning, sometimes also called language sensitive teaching.

  5. In English, Education Act.

  6. Guessing could be interpreted as a “norm” in some mathematics classrooms where it is better to guess than not give an answer at all in a discourse where “anything goes” (Björklund Boistrup, 2010).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers and Paul Andrews for providing scientific guidance in the writing of this article.

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  1. Department of Mathematics and Science Education, Stockholm University, 106 91, Stockholm, Sweden

    Eva Norén

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Norén, E. Agency and positioning in a multilingual mathematics classroom. Educ Stud Math 89, 167–184 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-015-9603-5

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