A Multicultural Mathematical Literacy Classroom

Multicultural education is an emerging discipline aiming to create equal educational opportunities for learners from divergent groups, whether they are racial, ethnic, class, culture or demographically related (Banks, 2001).

AlrØ, Skovsmose and Valero (2005) state that conflict can frequently occur in a multicultural classroom, but that the conflict includes potential for learning and development to take place. The conflicts can be related to family traditions, social structures, context of schooling, competencies in Mathematics, teacher background, learner background and planning and organisation of teaching. Successful

mathematical literacy is shaped when we take on board the understanding,

reasoning and mathematical thinking patterns in the society from which the learners come.

Diverse for me is to use examples in my classes from all walks of life and cultures and to use examples and scenarios that my students can relate to.

Getting feedback from students is also important and teaching at their level – taking their frame of reference into account.

Depending on the topic, but I try to vary my approaches as much as I can to accommodate the different learning styles of my diverse learners.

A multicultural classroom can also indicate demographic diversity, such as age differences amongst the learners. This phenomenon is definitely prevalent in my own classes and could possibly also be present in other colleges. As indicated on page 36, table 2.2, the age of the learners vary from 15 to 45 years. The frame of reference of the learners is thus vastly different and forces me to keep the context in mind when teaching certain topics.

During the interviews the educators mentioned that there was a language barrier that exists, making the transfer of knowledge more difficult.

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Group work is used extensively as it helps to group weaker with stronger learners. This practice helps to overcome the language barrier in some cases.

With difficult work I ask the stronger students to explain in a language the others can understand.

Their English is most cases are not good, and as previously said, places the lecturer under more pressure.

Due to the nature of the subject, lots of reading and interpretation, the language is a problem for most students.

In my experience, language is a great obstacle for the learners who speak English as a second language. The nature of Mathematical Literacy is such that it involves a large amount of information that has to be read to form an understanding of the questions or problems asked in question papers. If learners are struggling with the language, it is inevitable that they will not form an understanding of the problem and therefore be unable to come up with solutions.

There was also a problem regarding the mathematical competence of learners, some educators saying that basic knowledge was lacking.

Most work is theoretical with practical aspects, but at the lower levels of maths lit because students knowledge is so lacking more time is spent on trying to “catch up” what they do not know, leaving little time to practically do measuring/weighing etc.

Sometimes I group students weak and strong together and get the students that are more knowledgeable to help the weaker ones.

Generally the lecturer will have to explain most concepts right from the beginning, as in one class, various students are on different knowledge levels.

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I have to spend so much time on teaching them the basics, which they should know by now.

Students have come to me and told me that they are finding what we are doing very interesting, but that they struggle to do the maths. The struggling, it seems, stems from the fact that the maths taught or learned at the schools has been very minimal.

However, I soon realized how very weak the students are that are coming from the schools to the college. This has made me aware that I cannot assume that students know something, for example, fractions. I have really had to dig deep to find methods to teach students basic calculations very quickly.

It seems that the lack of basic mathematical competence of learners encroach on the time spent on the different topics. The statistics from the DoE (South Africa, 2008:1- 5) seems to mirror the problem with regard to weak results.

Rutherford and Ahlgren (1989) claims that it is of critical importance that learners should be taught in their mother tongue in order to construct knowledge in an

effective way. In practice this is not always possible, as multicultural classes consist out of learners from different language groups. The fact also remains that

examinations are only conducted in Afrikaans or English, leaving no scope for learners from other language groups to participate in their mother tongue.

At this stage, I can only speculate as to why the mathematical competence of the learners is so weak when they arrive at the colleges. As an educator I have noticed that the learners really struggle to cope with very basic Mathematical concepts. The bulk of class time is spent on “re-teaching” the basics. For the weak learner it means trying to overcome their fear of numbers and failure, but for the stronger learner it can be a very boring exercise.

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