Abstract
Research rarely focuses on how deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students address mathematical ideas. Complexities involved in using sign language (SL) in mathematics classrooms include not just challenges, but opportunities that accompany mathematics learning in this gestural-somatic medium. The authors consider DHH students primarily as learners of mathematics, and their SL use as a special case of language in the mathematics classroom. More specifically, using SL in teaching and learning mathematics is explored within semiotic and embodiment perspectives to gain a better understanding of how using SL affects the development, conceptualization, and representation of mathematical meaning. The theoretical discussion employs examples from the authors' work and research on geometry, arithmetic, and fraction concepts with Deaf German and Austrian learners and experts. The examples inform the context of mathematics teaching and learning more generally by illuminating SL features that distinguish mathematics learning for DHH learners.
Highlights
Ever since the paradigmatic shift from a behaviorist to a more constructivist understanding of learning, research in mathematics education has shown a strong emphasis on understanding better the processes of making meaning—on understanding better how students come to know what they know—and how different components shape learning processes in mathematics
These comparisons have often been measured quantitatively: explorations of the qualitative characteristics of deaf students’ processes of learning mathematics—for example, describing the ways in which they approach mathematical content and their strategies when solving mathematical problems, and the obstacles and pitfalls as they might be related to their specific practices in the learning process—have rarely been reported
This contribution centers around sign language as a specific practice significantly shaping teaching and learning for deaf mathematics learners as primary modes of meaning making from theoretical perspectives of semiotics and embodiment
Summary
American Annals of the Deaf, 166(3) (Special issue ‘Critical Topics in Mathematics Education: Research to Practice with Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing Students’), 358–383. Sign language in light of mathematics education: an exploration within semiotic and embodiment theories of learning mathematics. C.M. Krause, University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany) / University of California, Berkeley (USA)
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