Mathematical benefits of a language-friendly pedagogical tool: a praxeological analysis of teachers’ perceptions and practices

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we report on data from 40 middle and secondary school mathematics teachers and teacher candidates as they begin to articulate the intersection of language-friendly pedagogy, mathematics teaching, and a multilingual technological tool by way of a two-hour introductory workshop. We use an Anthropological Theory of the Didactic which recognises that mathematics instruction and language instruction are done differently under distinct institutional conditions (curriculum, culture, language, etc.) to analyse our data. Our findings suggest that teachers’ beliefs and perspectives regarding their multilingual students guide their choices about how to use a powerful digital multilingual platform to either remediate what they perceive as deficits in their students or leverage the assets of multilingual learners.

KEYWORDS:

• Language-friendly pedagogy
• mathematics teacher perceptions
• learning platform
• praxeology
• multilingual learners
• STEM

Acknowledgements

We want to acknowledge the contributions of Dania Wattar, a member of the ESCAPE Projects research team, in the co-creation and delivery of the workshop described in this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was financed by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.