/ 27 May 2011

Fluent in maths

Fluent In Maths

Professor Mamokgethi Setati, Professor of Mathematics Education and Executive Dean at the College of SET, UNISA, has worldwide respect for her innovative and quality research on multilingualism in mathematics education.

Setati says that there is a problem with mathematics education in South Africa, especially for African students that are learning the subject using a language in which they are not completely fluent. Her research journey began in 1998 with understanding the need to address the uneven distribution of mathematical knowledge and success.

This was related to the low mathematics performance of the majority of learners who were studying maths in a language other than their home language. Her initial research focused on what mathematics teachers do in multilingual classrooms. Later research revealed that mathematical talk and negotiation of mathematical meaning occurs and is encouraged in a situation where all of the learners’ linguistic resources are used.

“Apart from being an educational resource, the learners’ first language is also a key to the world and culture that the teacher shares with the learners,” says Setati. “It enables the teacher to make relevant connections with the pupils’ experiences outside school. Knowledge is then constructed by the interplay between the mathematics that is learnt, how it is learnt and the language used to learn it.”

Results from studies then pointed to the benefits of multilingual practices and code-switching (switching between languages) as important pedagogic resources in multilingual mathematics classrooms. Setati says that while these practices are encouraged by South Africa’s language policy, they are not taken up in practice.

“Language is much more than a pedagogic and cognitive resource when teaching or learning mathematics, it is always political. My research conducted between 1998 and 2001 considered the political role of language and, until this time, research had not captured this complexity,” says Setati. She found that, in South Africa, it’s difficult to move mathematics beyond procedural talk and multilingualism beyond solidarity and support.

Setati’s research has included developing an understanding of the language choices of mathematics teachers and learners, specifically about the overriding use of English. To date, she has been focusing on developing relevant and appropriate teaching strategies for multilingual mathematics classrooms which involve deliberately drawing on the learners’ home languages and include access to English.

Setati says that that we all have a role to play in ensuring that our learners are not just interested but successful in mathematics: “Nobody should ever make a public acknowledgement of how bad they were at mathematics. It suggests that it is okay not be successful at mathematics — a strong position for learners to hear. Rather say nothing at all.”

This article originally appeared in the Mail & Guardian newspaper as an advertorial supplement