Exploiting the power of multiple languages for mathematicslearning
The project ML2 develops best practices for mathematics teachers to learn about how to harness students’ multiple languages to promote their understanding of mathematics.
The European Union is becoming more and more superdiverse. Many students today speak multiple languages, not only the official language(s) of instruction in schools. Years of research have shown that exploiting these languages for the teaching and learning of mathematics has many benefits.
“Multilinguality can be a resource for understanding mathematics”
The project ML2 – Exploiting the Power of Multiple Languages for Mathematics Learning aims to promote the inclusion of multiple languages into the mathematics classroom. Particularly, it aims to promote harnessing learners' multiple languages as a resource for understanding mathematics.
Benefits
Objectives
Research has shown that speaking multiple languages has many benefits for learning mathematics:
Conceptual Understanding
When students speak about mathematics in their home language(s), they have additional resources for meaning making, as it helps them to connect to their everyday experiences.
Identity and Agency
When students are encouraged to use their home language(s) for learning, they feel that their identity is valued and recognized.
Language Awareness
When student reflect how different languages express mathematics, they develop an awareness of how mathematical language creates meanings.
The ML2 project aims to promote multi-language responsive mathematics teaching. Multi-language responsive mathematics teaching establishes classrooms where language diversity is appreciated, valued, and included in the learning process. The project has the following objectives:
Open Educational Resources
To design and evaluate Open Educational Resources that engage learners in using their multiple languages to better understand central mathematical concepts (area and perimeter, even numbers, completing the square,…). You can find these materials by following the link below.
Professional Development Opportunities
To co-create Professional Development (PD) opportunities with and for teachers, with the aim to support them to harness their students’ multiple languages as resources for meaning making of mathematics.
Interactive Guidelines
To develop interactive guidelines and videos for teachers and teacher educators for how to practically utilize learners’ multiple languages for the learning and teaching of mathematics.
Western Norway University of Apllied Sciences Bergen, Norway
Dr. Ángela Uribe
St.Gallen University of Teacher Education St. Gallen, Switzerland
Funding information
The material and this website stem from the project ML2 – Exploiting the Power of Multiple Languages for Mathematics Learning (grant no. 2021-1-NL01-KA220-SCH-000024585 to Alexander Schüler-Meyer, Susanne Prediger and Tamsin Meaney), funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of project owners only. They do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
Contact information
Dr. Alexander Schüler-Meyer Associate Professor for Mathematics Education Eindhoven School of Education T +31 (0)40 247 6097 a.k.schuelermeyer@tue.nl www.tue.nl PO Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, the Netherlands
