TRANSITIONAL STAGE: LANGUAGE DISJUNCTURE FOR INTERMEDIATE PHASE MATHEMATICS TEACHING, CHRIS HANI EAST EDUCATION

Source abstract

It becomes worth noting that as learners transition from one learning phase to the other, instructional strategies get redefined in a manner that interchangeably affects the greatest percentage of subjects in line with academic performance, buttressing the prescribed curriculum within the context of the South African schooling system. Mathematics learning has since been adversely impacted because of the language disjuncture of transitioning from home language instruction offered at the Foundation Phase (FP), yet as learners enrol for the Intermediate Phase (IP), policy depicts the application of an additional language at this stage, specifically the English medium for the purposes of this study. Therefore, this paper investigates how the teaching and learning of mathematics for IP learners in multilingual classrooms is affected by language disjuncture. For this qualitative inquiry, four IP Mathematics teachers were purposefully nominated as data informants. Although related studies have been conducted, there are some identified yet crucial gaps in the existing literature and practice in accordance with the intersecting language and mathematics education as normally depicted by classrooms within multilingual settings. This study revealed that (i) language transition creates barriers to mathematical comprehension and (ii) limited understanding of the mathematical vocabulary has been proved to hinder learner academic attainment. It is concluded by this paper that substantial challenges for Mathematics teaching and learning are steered by transition within the instructional languages. Hence, this paper recommends that to bridge the gap, there is a need for policy makers to redefine instructional teaching and learning strategies.