Using translanguaging to support mother tongue-based bilingual education in mathematics classrooms

Abstract

In many African countries, the transition model remains the dominant approach for including indigenous languages into formal schooling, with learners initially taught in their home language before shifting to a globally dominant language. From 2025, South Africa moved away from this model, adopting a mother tongue-based bilingual education (MTBBE) model where learners study mathematics, science and technology in their home language up to Grade 7, with English introduced incrementally. Drawing on data from a research and development project involving professional development sessions with 60 Grade 4 mathematics teachers and classroom observations of 15 of these teachers, this study examines how an integrated language-responsive mathematics teaching–translanguaging framework can strengthen the implementation of MTBBE in South African mathematics classrooms. The merged framework enabled the identification of pedagogically desirable yet underdeveloped practices, particularly those related to the linguistic mediation of mathematical meaning. The study extends translanguaging research in mathematics education by making explicit the pedagogical ‘jobs’ of teachers in managing multilingual resources to support both procedural fluency and conceptual understanding. The findings aim to inform MTBBE policy and classroom practice by providing a theoretically grounded and contextually responsive lens for leveraging learners’ full linguistic repertoires to enhance access to mathematical reasoning and disciplinary sense-making.

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