Defining issues in Ed Ling

[Richard Barwell]

Message-ID: <EXECMAIL.1031216154759.M at educ-pc56.bristol.ac.uk>
Priority: NORMAL
X-Mailer: Execmail for Win32 Version 5.0.1 Build (55)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="us-ascii"


Bob-

| I think you have hit an important point in the dialectic of education
| and linguistics.  What is needed is a model of language that
| identifies the conceptual development required to participate in
| mathematical discussion - the  language of mathematics.  But on the
| other hand, different realms of discourse (home language, school
| language, etc) contain and nurture mathematical ideas. So part of the
| point of mathematical language is to partition off a sphere of
| discourse, and create the conceptual leverage  required to bring
| students into the conversation. This conceptual leverage operates by
| adding new meanings to terms in the home/school languages, as well as
| adding new terms to the students' verbal repertoirs.

Okay, and 'bringing students into the conversation' entails learning
other kinds of talk - how to explain, justify, reason etc..as well as
learning that explaining and justifying and reasoning are done
differently (using different language) in different domains. So there's
lots of meta stuff going on.

| I would propose
| that we need an inventory of the terminological and conceptual moves
| that are/should be made in bringing students into the specifically
| mathematical discourse. And part of the problem will be to introduce
| the idea of a "realm of discourse" (discipline) in which a small
| group of people decide exactly what they want to mean by their
| "language".

I'm not quite sure what you mean by inventory or what it might look
like, but it sounds rather prescriptive...rather goes against inviting
people into a conversation and engaging with 'stakeholders' as others
have suggested. The line I take is to use the tools of linguistics
(allied with those of psychology, sociology etc.) to work with teachers
so that they become more aware of how they use language and how their
students use language to do mathematics or whatever, so that they are
then in a position to work on language use as part of their practice.
That's not to say that thinking, talking, writing about conceptual
moves etc. would not be a contribution (I write about such things
myself), but as part of a dialogue, rather than a list of dos and
don'ts.

Richard

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Richard Barwell
Graduate School of Education
University of Bristol
35 Berkeley Square
Bristol, BS8 1JA, UK
+44 (0)117 33 14276