Preservice teachers’ reflections on language diversity

In this paper, we investigate how preservice teachers (PTs) express their awareness about language diversity in mathematics classrooms. We use “language as resource” and “language as a problem” as theoretical constructs. The data is taken from PTs´ group assignments, including transcriptions of dialogues between the PTs and multilingual students, and from PTs´ written reflections about teaching in multilingual classrooms. We found that in the dialogues, PTs and multilingual students produced meanings together through negotiating a shared repertoire from out-of-school and in-school mathematics context. Nevertheless, the students’ home languages were not evident as resources in PT´s dialogues and reflections. A deficit perspective was present in their reflections. These findings lead us to rethink our teacher education courses so that language as a resource becomes more prominent. Keywords: Language as resource, language as a problem, preservice teachers.