A Language of Teaching Dilemmas: Unlocking the Complex Multilingual Secondary Mathematics Classroom.

Abstract

As a mathematics teacher and teacher educator, I am concerned not only with improving the quality of mathematical learning and teaching, but also with social justice and equity. In more macro terms, I am concerned with both the growth and development of mathematical knowledge and of democracy, a task made all the more difficult by the turbulence, uncertainty and rapid change, particularly in technology, which are the hallmarks of the contemporary period. Given this macro-framework, teaching mathematics successfully to all in school is a complex task. It includes: enabling epistemic access for all to appropriate mathematical knowledge in school, and enabling ike participation and inclusion of diverse voices in the mathematics curriculum. In this light, the task of managing the teaching-learning process is filled with tensions. On the one hand, there are the tensions among spontaneous, intuitive and diverse mathematisations (everyday mathematics), the mathematics of mathematicians (the discipline of mathematics) and the canonised curriculum (school mathematics). And, on the other, teachers and teacher educators face the tension of simultaneously being the agents and the objects of change. These tensions are part of our historical moment. They give rise to the challenge in mathematics education and teacher education of empowering ourselves and our students to manage dynamic tensions in teaching-learning processes effectively. In these rather sweeping introductory comments, I have tried to capture the themes of tensions, diversity, turbulence and change which infuse current mathematics education practice. My task in this article is to illustrate the complexities of secondary mathematics teaching and learning in contemporary multilingual classrooms. Specifically, I will show how and why, based on recently completed research, a language of dilemmas provides a powerful explanatory and analytic tool as well as a source of praxis in mathematics education in a changing educational and political context.

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