Eva Norén

Making Use of Multiple (Non-shared) First Languages: State of and Need for Research and Development in the European Language Context

Wide empirical evidence and theoretical explanations show that first languages are important resources for increasing access to mathematics for learners whose first language is not the language of instruction. Whereas including the first language is well established in many countries outside Europe, especially those with shared first languages, most European classrooms deal with five or more (non-shared) first languages without making use of them. This chapter explores the specific European language context and its cultural, political, and institutional dimensions. We report practices of including first languages and report on European research into its effects and conditions.

Student agency and counter-narratives in diverse multilingual mathematics classrooms : Challenging deficit perspectives

Mathematics classrooms around the world serve students who are learning the dominant language of instruction. These students’ forms of participation in mathematical activity have often been examined from deficit perspectives. Mathematics education research is in great need of counter-narratives to such prevailing deficit assumptions so that we can see how such learners productively use existing resources to engage in mathematics. In this chapter we examine potentially fruitful ways of framing identity and learning centered on student agency that can be brought to bear on the analysis of emergent multilinguals’ mathematical activity. We then illustrate the utility of agency-centered framings with vignettes of student interactions that focus on how emergent bilinguals used multiple linguistic resources in powerful ways. The vignettes are drawn from a variety of international mathematics classroom contexts and focus on students as creative users of linguistic resources in ways that serve a variety of functions during mathematical activity.

Multilingual students’ agency in mathematics classrooms

During the last years we have noticed an increasing attention in mathematics education research addressing agency (see for example Andersson, 2011; Bjorklund Boistrup, 2010; Boaler & Greeno, 2000; Grootenboer & Jorgensen, 2010; Grootenboer & Zevenbergen, 2007; Lange, 2010; Macmillan, 2004; Martin, 2000; Noren, 2010; Powell, 2004; Wagner, 2004, 2007). Why agency at this point in time? According to Ahearn (2001) one answer, that we agree with, is that there is a clear connection of interests in approaches that foreground practice on the one hand, and social movement on the other.

To halve a fraction : An issue for second language learners

ABSTRACT The present study investigated test responses from 259 immigrant and non-immigrant school year 9 students in Sweden with the focus on how they solved two problems on fractions, one of them halving a fraction, in a test. The authors report three observations. Newly arrived second language immigrants seemed less likely to have the word ‘half’ in their Swedish mathematical vocabulary. Moreover, second language learners with longer experience of the new language connected the word ‘half’ with a division by two, but showed mathematical difficulties in correctly applying it to a fraction. A third finding was that the longer the experiences with Swedish school mathematics, the more likely both first and second language learners were to erroneously omit the percentage symbol, when choosing to use percentage representation of the fraction given in the test problem. The authors suggest seeing newly and early arrived second language immigrants as meeting different challenges. The newly arrived second language immigrants may know some mathematical concepts better and Swedish language less. In contrast the opposite seems to hold for second language learners with longer experience of the language of instruction.