ADMINISTRACIÓN LOCAL AYUNTAMIENTO DE BURGOS

CDA provides tools to analyze how discourse symbolizes the mathematics classroom in college mathematics classrooms in particular interests and how the mathematics teacher educators are positioned in relation to their student teachers in the context of mathematics teaching. In this study, the theory of CDA will also be used to find out how the mathematics teacher educators in Malawi construct multilingual mathematics classrooms and how mathematics teacher educators use their spoken and written language. Furthermore, it will be used to uncover the discourse practices being used during their teaching in a college mathematics classroom and how they make available the discourse practices for the student teachers to draw on.

CDA addresses my interest in identifying the tacit as well as explicit features of mathematics teacher educators’ talk (and accompanying non verbal communication) that impact upon the kinds of relationships and identities that exist in their college mathematics classrooms. These features would point to the discourse practices that the mathematics teacher educators display and make available for the student teachers. The central argument here is that the nature of the typical discourse practices of the college mathematics classroom in multilingual contexts may be a significant factor for producing the discourse practices for school mathematics teaching and making it available for the student teachers to draw on.

In a classroom situation, mathematics teacher educators and student teachers use language/texts (written or spoken) to make sense of their community and to construct social actions and relations required for teaching and learning mathematics. A great deal depends on both the mathematics teacher educators’ and student teachers’ capacities to construct, control and manipulate texts, if mathematics teacher educators and student teachers are to participate accordingly in their classrooms. According to Fairclough (2001), whenever people speak, write, listen, or read, they do so in ways which are considered as appropriate in a particular social setting. It can, therefore, be assumed that in a college mathematics classroom, for mathematics teacher educators to produce

texts accordingly (written or spoken language during teaching and interaction with the student teachers) and be able to control and manipulate texts, they need to know what to say and what to do, and at what time. Therefore, CDA in this case opens up additional ways for investigating what mathematics teacher educators in college mathematics classrooms know, in order to produce, interpret and evaluate the texts produced when teaching student teachers and the hidden motivations behind the language used. As for the student teachers, they need to know and understand the texts produced by their mathematics teacher educators and be able to manipulate, interpret and evaluate in the context, if they are to participate in their classes.

In the case of spoken texts like conversations in a college mathematics classroom, language is used to represent mathematics teacher educators’ positions and ideas to establish and build up relations and identities. Spoken and written texts are objects in which cultural representations and social relations and identities are expressed through language and other signal structures (Luke, 1992). However, in a classroom situation, mathematics teacher educators’ texts are not used for a fixed position or identity only. They are the actual media through which their socially constructed and contested identities are made and remade (Luke, 1996). Extending this into a mathematics classroom in college mathematics classrooms and the focus of this study, the interactions between mathematics teacher educators and student teachers should enable the student teachers to act as mathematics teachers. It can, therefore, be assumed that it is through the everyday texts produced by the mathematics teacher educators that student teachers learn how to recognize, represent and be a member of a community (i.e. a mathematics teacher in a multilingual classroom). What this means is that what mathematics teacher educators say, how they say it and how they interact with the student teachers together makeup available discourse practices for the student teachers to draw on. It is not only the school curriculum and policies that influence the student teachers’ practices but also how the mathematics teacher educators use their language. Of course, how the student teachers use what they have learnt when they go for actual teaching in a primary mathematics multilingual classroom also depends on the context and local factors in the particular school.

Depending on how the discourse practices are made available, they may enhance or limit the development of the discourse practices necessary for school mathematics teaching in multilingual classrooms. The way mathematics teacher educators use their language may advantage some student teachers in a mathematics classroom to have access to the discourse practices for mathematics teaching while at the same time disadvantaging others. This suggests that the discourse practices of mathematics teacher educators can enable, obstruct or even deny the student teachers, and hence access to the discourse practices for school mathematics teaching. Through the practices of the mathematics teacher educators, the student teachers can exercise control and selection of the mathematics teaching practice. Thus learning how to teach mathematics is placed in cultural practice, in the community of a mathematics classroom. Therefore, the organization of activities can make the discourse practices for mathematics teaching and learning visible to student teachers in practice. It can further make visible the less explicit facets of multilingual mathematics classroom discourse practices. It will also provide a means for identifying thoughts that mathematics teacher educators promote and the interests they serve as they interact with the student teachers.

Thus, this research argues that mathematics teacher educators and student teachers interaction or talk in a mathematics classroom is a critical site at this stage, in the student teachers careers, in which different positions are created. It is argued that becoming a full participant as a mathematics teacher depends not only on the availability and use of mathematics or other textbooks, for example, but also on being exposed to and having insight into mathematics teaching practices. In line with this argument, the discourse practices of the mathematics teacher educators also contribute to the effective development of the student teachers in becoming full participants.

Considering the interaction and talk between the student teachers and the mathematics teacher educators in a mathematics classroom, the interaction between them involves the actual actions, problems, hopes and needs in regard to the primary mathematics teaching profession. The classroom talk as a discourse is one where the participants concerned are expected to share the characteristics of teaching. In other words, we can say that it is a power relationship which operates through the participant thoughts,

intentions, desires, and whatever contributions that may or may not be difficult to tell. In this sense, the interactions in a mathematics classroom serve to build the participants’ identity as a kind of speaking subject, such as, for example, a facilitator or an expert. Thus interactions tell a story that reveals the participants’ identities.