Abstract Summary
In our paper, we focus on literacy practices in a transitional mathematics classroom in a secondary school in southern Finland. We aim to build towards a frame of reference that would help mathematics teachers to understand what supporting emerging literacies means in relation to their own subject.
Abstract :
Literacy is a situated interpretive and developmental process that enables acting and meaning making in different spheres of life (Baquedano-López 2004). From this perspective, the role of language as a mediating semiotic system in the development of literacies is of central importance (ibid.), and language is the most important tool for learning (Vygotsky 1978). Although linguistically responsive subject content teaching is an overarching value for instance in the latest Finnish core curriculum (POPS 2014), the issue is discussed in terms of language awareness, a notion that does not provide conceptual tools for implementing it. However, if subject specific literacies are seen as contextually sensitive meaning making practices, such conceptual tools are needed because the viewpoint entails a more multidimensional perspective to language - and in the case of multilingual students, ways of bridging between sets of practices.
In this paper, we explore the different dimensions of ‘language’ by focusing on literacy practices in a transitional mathematics classroom in a secondary school in southern Finland. The video-recorded data analysed for this study consists of mathematics lessons and group projects where students collaboratively solve mathematics problems. Students in this group are 13 – 17 years of age and at the time of the fieldwork, going through their first school year in Finland. In our analyses, we concentrate both on the students’ multilingual problem-solving strategies and the linguistic support provided by the teacher.[quotrightB?]¯
Through our empirical analyses, we aim to build towards a frame of reference that would help mathematics teachers to understand what supporting emerging literacies means in relation to their own subject at these fairly early stages of second language socialization. Our analyses highlight the importance of seeing the interactional and cultural aspects of multi-modal and multi-lingual meaning making as the key to mathematics literacy and teacher development on the subject.
