In this chapter, I suggest that learning how to teach mathematics in multilingual classrooms can be understood as discourse practices where discourse practices here means “the whole process of social interaction of which text is just part of it (Fairclough, 1989, p. 24); and include language forms (written and spoken), patterns of
interactions among the participants, as well as values embedded in the use of language and power relations and attitudes to knowledge”. Furthermore, discourse practices include language forms (written or spoken) which operate together with verbal and visual elements such as depiction and gesture in the context of “meaning- burdened designs” (Fairclough, Graham, Lemke & Wodak, 2004, p. 5). In other words, learning how to teach school mathematics in teacher training colleges includes the language that is in use in the college mathematics classroom together with accompanying verbal and visual elements in the context of teaching. It is a discourse practice with specific activities and discursive practices different from the learning of school mathematics. For example, student teachers, when learning how to teach, have to be able to deal with the problem of attending to different learners’ solutions, whereas in learning the issue is just to get the solution, one does not have to know a variety of solutions. Thus, learning how to teach mathematics can be regarded as a distinct discourse practice.
Student teachers in a college mathematics classroom, therefore, learn and develop familiarity and confidence with the discourse practices for school mathematics teaching. Willet (1995) argues that learning a language is the process of becoming a member of a socio-cultural group. Willet further argues that, by engaging in the socio-cultural practices of the group, people gradually appropriate the language and culture needed to be considered an insider or part of the group. In Willet’s (1995) words, we can say that learning how to teach mathematics is the process of becoming a member of a mathematics teaching community and requires student teachers to engage in its practices in order to acquire the discourse practices. The new discourse practices enables student teachers to become active members and be accepted by the wider community of mathematics teachers. However, in this case, student teachers can use the discourse practices after it has been made available to them through their mathematics teacher educators in the teacher training programmes. The question is how do mathematics teacher educators make available these discourse practices to the student teachers?
Through the interaction between the student teachers and the mathematics teacher educators in the mathematics teaching classroom, the student teachers are initiated into
the discourse practices. This means that, through the interaction, mathematics teacher educators in a mathematics classroom display the discourse practices for mathematics teaching to the student teachers as Mercer (1995) puts it:
Teachers are expected to help their students develop ways of talking, writing and thinking which will enable them to travel on wider intellectual journeys, understand and being understood by other members of the wider communities of education (p. 83).
Although, Mercer was talking about school learners, his ideas apply just as well to the mathematics teacher educators. In Mercer’s language, mathematics teacher educators are expected to help the student teachers develop ways of talking, writing and thinking which may enable them to teach in multilingual classrooms. Rogoff (1990, p. 195) explains that, while participating in social activity, individuals jointly build shared understandings of the activity. It can be argued therefore that it is in the process of finding the common ground and incorporating the language used, the skills, and the perspectives constituting the activity that the student teachers in mathematics classrooms acquire a range of discourse practices.
Therefore, I argue that mathematics teacher educators who have been in the practice for some time have acquired the discourse practices that are involved and need to be encouraged in order to develop discourse practices for school mathematics teaching. However, this may depend on their community, their access to resources and or the availability of the materials needed for activities related to their discourse practices for mathematics teaching development. Developing discourse practices for school mathematics teaching in a multilingual classroom is thus not simply an individual’s activity; rather it is connected to the mathematics teacher educators and student teachers’ participation and evolves in and through interaction in their classrooms.
It should be understood, however, that this is not a one-way process by which student teachers in a mathematics classroom will just appropriate knowledge and skills as displayed by their mathematics teacher educators. It occurs through the politics of social interaction (Bloome & Willet, 1991). Bakhtin (1982), Gee (1990), Goffman (1967), Gumperz (1982) and Willet (1995) argue that people not only build shared understandings in the process of interaction, they also evaluate, and contest those
understandings as they struggle to further individual agendas. Willet (1995) continues to argue that as people act and react to one another in a community, they also build social relations (for example hierarchical relations) and identities (for example, good student). According to Fairclough (1989), these structures both constrain and sustain relationships of power, solidarity and social order which are shaped by the broader political and historical contexts in which they are embedded. Through this process of interaction, these relations, identities, and ideologies are altered and reshaped (Rodby, 1992).
Bloome & Bailey (1992) argue that people build actions by acting and reacting to one another and holding one another accountable for acting within the evolving interpretive framework of the event. They establish participants’ identities, roles and create norms, rules, and strategies for accomplishing events and criteria for evaluating them. Such an orientation has considerable implications for this study of the discourse practices of the mathematics teacher educators as they interact with the student teachers. In the process of acting and reacting to one another, the mathematics teacher educators and student teachers build their discourse practices. That is, what mathematics teacher educators say and do shapes both their discourse practices and the student teachers’ discourse practices. Similarly, what student teachers do and say in the college mathematics classrooms also contributes to both the discourse practices of the mathematics teacher educators and of themselves.
In this research, I have used a CDA approach to examine the discourse practices of the mathematics teacher educators in teacher training colleges and how they enact these discourse practices for the student teachers to draw on. The next section discusses the theoretical underpinnings of Norman Fairclough’s CDA. His systematic approach to and method in analysis are the reasons for its application in this study.