Mathematics Education in a Multilingual and Multicultural Environment

Abstract

For this topic study group, 35 papers were accepted from a range of different cultural, linguistic and country contexts. The papers were discussed under specific thematic questions. These themes provide an organizing framework for this report that draws its content from the papers and the discussion in the TSG 30 sessions. The submissions illustrated the rich diversity in the kinds of issues that arise in mathematics education in multilingual and multicultural environments. These include challenges for teaching, learning, curriculum, pedagogy, teacher education and use of technology in and for multilingual and multicultural settings. Issues were at the level of policy (e.g. language of instruction) and at the level of classrooms (e.g. teaching methods, curriculum) and teacher education (e.g. models of pre-service and teacher professional development). Diversity was also seen in terms of the geographical spread of the contexts from where papers were presented. The diversity of contexts reflects technologically advanced countries with increasingly large immigrant populations (e.g. Australia, Canada, Germany, Sweden, USA, UK), postcolonial countries with concomitant colonial languages as the medium of instruction (e.g. Ghana, Pakistan, Malaysia, South Africa, Tanzania) and countries with varied indigenous and official languages (e.g. China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, New Zealand). The overwhelming prevalence of issues related to quality of mathematics education in multilingual and multilingual contexts illustrates its significance.