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Fostering meaning in a trilingual mathematics classroom by connecting everyday and school mathematical ways of talking: a design approach

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Abstract

There is a disconnect between what most curricular documents suggest about connecting classroom pedagogy with learners’ language and everyday context, and what the language of mathematics textbooks and the language of mathematics classroom practices present. Attempting to bridge this gap is often a design challenge for classroom teaching practices that face multiple languages during mathematics learning processes. In this paper I discuss results from a teaching design experiment for fostering meaning, using language support, in a middle grades mathematics classroom. I analyse the complexities and challenges that arise, as a way forward for purposefully relating with teaching practice. Following the design principles of connecting students’ language varieties and engaging them in rich discourse practices during lessons, in this paper I show that enabling shifts in classroom norms by moving from oral to written mathematics, and moving from private to public and shared expressions, fostered meaning making and empowered students’ mathematical communication. Data are drawn from an empirical study conducted in a low-income community engaged in micro-enterprises dispersed among households in India. Children in the community have access to the work-contexts and hence to the mathematical knowledge and language repertoires embedded in them.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my mentor and colleague K. Subramaniam for the enriching discussions, guidance and suggestions with the ideas formulated in this text and Norma Presmeg for the valuable editorial comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India

    Arindam Bose

  2. Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP), Diadema, Brazil

    Arindam Bose

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Correspondence to Arindam Bose.

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Bose, A. Fostering meaning in a trilingual mathematics classroom by connecting everyday and school mathematical ways of talking: a design approach. ZDM Mathematics Education 53, 405–417 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-021-01254-1

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