Books by Núria Planas
Equity in mathematics education, 2019
For the past decade reform efforts have placed importance on all students being able to participa... more For the past decade reform efforts have placed importance on all students being able to participate in collaborative and productive mathematical discourse as an essential component for their learning of mathematics with deep conceptual understandings. In this book our intent is to support mathematics education researchers, teacher educators, teachers and policy makers in providing positive solutions to the enduring challenge in mathematics education of enabling all participants including diverse students to equitably access mathematical discourse. By diverse learners we mean learners who are minoritized in terms of gender, disability, or/and social, cultural, ethnic, racial or language backgrounds. We aim to increase understanding about what it means to imagine, design and engage with policy and practice which enhance opportunities for all students to participate in productive mathematical discourse. In widening the lens across policy and practice settings we recognize the interplay between the many complex factors that influence student participation in mathematics. The various chapters tell practical stories of equitable practices for diverse learners within a range of different contexts. Different research perspectives, empirical traditions, and conceptual foci are presented in each chapter. Various aspects of diversity are raised, issues of concern are engaged with, and at times conventional wisdom challenged as the authors provide insights as to how educators may address issues of equitable access of minoritized learners to the mathematical discourse within settings across early primary through to high school, and situated in schools or in family and community settings.
This book examines multiple facets of language diversity and mathematics education. It features r... more This book examines multiple facets of language diversity and mathematics education. It features renowned authors from around the world and explores the learning and teaching of mathematics in contexts that include multilingual classrooms, indigenous education, teacher education, blind and deaf learners, new media and tertiary education. Each chapter draws on research from two or more countries to illustrate important research findings, theoretical developments and practical strategies.
UNIÓN, una revista consolidada, Jan 1, 2008
Page 251. Diciembre de 2008, Número 16, páginas 251-253 ISSN: 1815-0640 L i b r o s L i b r o s L... more Page 251. Diciembre de 2008, Número 16, páginas 251-253 ISSN: 1815-0640 L i b r o s L i b r o s L i b r o s L i b r o s Matemática inclusiva: propuestas para una educación matemática accesible Autor: Àngel Alsina y Núria ...
Articles -English by Núria Planas
ZDM Mathematics Education, 2022
During the last decades, the study of how learners and teachers of mathematics use the resource o... more During the last decades, the study of how learners and teachers of mathematics use the resource of language has contributed to our understanding of mathematics teaching and learning in a variety of classrooms and cultures. Developmental work with mathematics teachers on the particular resource of mathematics teaching talk is more recent. In order to explore responses related to the importance of this talk, in this paper we consider three sites of practice in mathematics education-research, professional development and teaching-and illustrations of data from or about them, including studies from the literature, and work with secondary school mathematics teachers in Catalonia-Spain and Malawi around the teaching of angles. We argue that tensions permeate these sites of practice when a focus is placed on word use, specifically the practices of naming and explaining, in mathematics teaching talk. We conclude that the importance of mathematics teaching talk is construed through tensions with other resources in language and teaching. Tensions specifically appear in the realisation of mathematics teaching talk as mediational in the work with mathematics teachers on their classroom teaching.
In the context of refinement of frameworks over the past decades within the domain of mathematics... more In the context of refinement of frameworks over the past decades within the domain of mathematics education research on language, the development of more nuanced theories is a challenge. In this issue of ZDM, a number of researchers present their work of exploration and elaboration of theories for the study and understanding of language in mathematics education. Since various relevant frameworks are present in the collection of papers, we use them to consider and evaluate the existing ontology. We aim to answer the following questions: What theories and concepts are visible in the papers? What are the works of some of the authors and terms that seem to be interpreted differently? What does this complexity imply for research in mathematics education? From the answers to these questions, we conclude that the domain can be characterised by its complexity, diversity, and contention. All three phenomena together seem to have the potential to be a strength for the progress of the domain.
We discuss language diversity in mathematics education research by considering the move from a vi... more We discuss language diversity in mathematics education research by considering the move from a view of language as representation that strives to correlate concepts, ideas, codes and signs towards addressing the representation politics of language. Language as representation of mathematics has framed the discursive construction of language diversity over the years in published research in our field. We argue that the representation politics of language as grounded in cultural and postcolonial studies enables us to see the meanings attributed to language diversity as resulting from a complex 'circuit of culture' in the realm of global and local identity politics. Three questions help us in this endeavour: (1) What are assumed as commonly shared meanings about language diversity? (2) How do they become present in prevailing discourses about the languages of mathematics, teachers and learners? (3) How may a view of language diversity as part of the 'circuit of culture' disturb the normative presence of such assumptions? Keywords Mathematics education research · Language · Language diversity · Politics of representation · Cultural and postcolonial studies · Circuit of culture
The thinking of language as resource in mathematics education research has been more metaphorical... more The thinking of language as resource in mathematics education research has been more metaphorical than conceptual so far. This article provides grounds and reasons for the theorization of language as resource. Based on views from sociolinguistics and functional grammar, I propose a theorization that considers the social languages of learners and the systems of language as discursive dialectical sites of potential/actual and shared/non-shared meaning production. I illustrate the analysis of a text of a student group work in order to inform the discussion. The approach to data analysis seeks out tensions between potentially realizable and actual meaning in the immediacy of situations embedded in cultures of school mathematics and the official language of instruction. In the midst of social and personal relationships and diverse experiences in/of the world, language is a shifting resource for the communication of tensions regarding languages of learners and the creation of newer situations toward the production of meaning taken as mathematical and shared.
In this paper, we expand our prior work on mathematics education in contexts of language diversit... more In this paper, we expand our prior work on mathematics education in contexts of language diversity by elaborating on the three perspectives on language described by Ruiz (NABE J 8(2):15–34, 1984): language-as-right, language-as-resource, and language-as-problem. We illustrate our arguments with data taken from research contexts in Catalonia-Spain and South Africa. In these two parts of the world, the language policy in education has long been an issue, with a monolingual orientation that values one language (i.e., Catalan in Catalonia and English in South Africa) over others. Throughout the introduction of specific examples of policy documents, classroom practices, and participants’ reports, our main point is that the right of using the students’ languages makes sense because it is itself more than an intrinsic human right; it is an option that potentially benefits the creation of mathematics learning opportunities. Especially for the instances of classroom practices, our examples can be considered as representative in that they point to a common situation in our data: despite the fact of the language of learning and teaching being fixed, there is room for the learners and the teacher to take or react to a decision on what language to use, with whom, and how in concrete moments of the interaction. However, on the basis of our studies and drawing on the literature in mathematics education and language diversity, we argue that language rights are not sufficiently connected to language as a pedagogical resource. The enactment of these rights is still contributing in many ways to the social and political construction of problems concerning the role of certain languages in classroom interaction. We conclude the paper by discussing some possibilities for framing language as a resource that provide effective support to all students’ learning of mathematics.
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Books by Núria Planas
Articles -English by Núria Planas
las metáforas imperantes de la lengua como derecho y como problema, añada la metáfora de la lengua como recurso. La triple caracterización de la lengua como derecho, problema y recurso asume en última instancia que la función básica de las lenguas de los estudiantes en el aula es contribuir a la creación colectiva de oportunidades de aprendizaje.