Language mediating learning: The function of language in mediating and shaping the classroom experiences of students, teachers and researchers
Abstrakt
This Research Forum addresses theoretical, methodological and practical issues associated with language use and the mathematics classroom. All forum components have the function of language as their central and cohering theme, but address different forms of language use within that overarching theme.
Language as communicative exchange provides the vehicle for the social construction of knowledge in mathematics classrooms. Language as discourse prescribes the limits of acceptable speech (Butler, 1997), both within the mathematics classroom and among the community of mathematics teachers when discussing the mathematics classroom.
Within classroom discourse, different types of talk can be identified, characterised and their function in the learning process investigated. Language also functions as the medium by which the academic community analyse and theorise the phenomena for which the mathematics classroom is the setting.
While these functions of language may appear quite distinct, it is our suggestion that they are profoundly intertwined: the language by which teachers shape the practices they orchestrate reflects cultural-historical origins that also sets bounds on researchers' capacity to articulate theory concerning those practices. The Research Forum purposefully combines a variety of cultural and theoretical perspectives in order to interrogate the role of language.