EAL STUDENTS IN MATHEMATICS LESSONS

EAL students in Mathematics Lessons



EAL students in Mathematics Lessons

Introduction

As lecturers in teacher education at universities, we have observed several issues associated with the relationships between the theories which we are expected to teach to student mathematics teachers, the theories which are actually taught to them, and their teaching practice. In particular, we emphasise the anxiety and disappointment which primary and secondary mathematics student teachers experience when they finish their undergraduate course. This situation is essentially generated by expectations about the pre-service education course which were not achieved.

For instance, many feel insecure about their performance in teaching mathematical topics and confused about the role of “pedagogical aspects”. This situation is also generated by complex issues such as adverse social and economic contexts, demands from the job market, and governmental policies. This range of issues requires attitudes from mathematics teachers which were not developed during their pre-service teaching education. In this paper, we examine some of the aspects associated with these issues for mathematics teachers at the beginning of their careers. We do not pretend to be exhaustive, and certainly we will not cover all aspects involved.

In the next two sections, we will focus our discussion in the context of the current educational system. The discussion which follows in the third section is based on reflections of our own practice in mathematics teacher education, which is changing due to current research in mathematics education and the new educational policies.

Mathematics teaching practice in challenging contexts

The continental dimension associated with previous unequal regional development policies caused hugely disparate contexts of formal education in different parts of Brazil. This multifaceted situation allowed or impeded the development of different experiences from the official directions. On the one hand, some city councils have been developing interesting curricula approaches, which consider the “rhythm” of development of students rather than the constrained “time” imposed by academic year. This perspective proposes a curricular organisation by cycles of learning as an attempt to avoid fracturing school content. According to this approach, mathematics teaching should happen through the development of interdisciplinary theme projects involving a group of teachers. On the other hand, the reality for thousands of students of mathematics education in private schools or in schools based in rural and small towns is still very close to traditional teaching approaches.

The perspectives in mathematics education, official prescriptions and the complexity of social context, challenge new mathematics teachers and those who teach them. In particular, it seems that there is a significant gap between the education about teaching developed in universities and colleges and the multifaceted “real world” in which mathematics teaching practice is inserted.

In such challenging contexts, we found ourselves joining our students and frequently asking several questions about the role theories might have in this complex context of change, such as: Which teaching and learning theories would be suitable to support the entire range of requirements defined by national curriculum policies in teaching specific mathematical topics? Are there theories that can be ...