Diversity in Mathematics and Statistics Classrooms: Significant Approaches for Improving Teaching and Learning for Multilingual and Multicultural Students

This book adopts a language- and culture -as-resource approach and broadens our understanding of diversity which may be observed, heard, and felt in today's mathematics and statistics classrooms. It draws on significant approaches to improving teaching and learning in mathematics and statistics education in multilingual and multicultural settings. It also presents and discusses critical research work from a range of geographical contexts from five continents. Research from Asia-Pacific contexts as well as from a few countries which are often underrepresented in the mathematics education research field is particularly highlighted in this book. This book summarizes the state of research in mathematics and statistics education providing empirical research, and showcases different theoretical and methodological perspectives, to inform implications for policy and practice in mathematics and statistics classrooms.  

Dr. Sashi Sharma is an associate professor at the Division of Education, University of Waikato, New Zealand. She is a mathematics educator who is employing a language-as-resource approach to increase the learning opportunities for all learners by focusing on mathematics/statistics and language development. As someone from a Pacific nation who has conducted research in the region, multilingualism is of personal importance as well as of strategic relevance. She has published extensively in the area of mathematics and statistics education. Her research interests span statistical literacy and lexical ambiguity in statistics. 

Dr. Danyal Farsani is an associate professor of mathematics education and is interested in language particularly in the verbal, vocal, and visual forms of language. He has experienced teaching (and learning) mathematics in three different continents in five different countries (Iran, United Kingdom, Chile, Brazil, and Norway). Danyal has published various papers in educational, educational psychology, and educational technology journals concerning teaching and learning mathematics in multilingual and multicultural contexts. 

Dr. Shweta Sharma is a lecturer and teacher educator at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. She is interested in the role of language in mathematical meaning-making. Her thinking is largely influenced by Bakhtin’s Dialogic theory, which takes language use as social action. As a multilingual person and a primary teacher, she has experienced how language is not merely a tool for transferring knowledge, but rather an action of displaying and negotiating understandings. She is an emerging researcher with an active publication record.