Language and mathematics education for aboriginal‐australian children

Abstract

If we start with the view that doing mathematics is making mathematical meanings using certain forms of discourse, it follows that language considerations are profoundly involved in mathematics education. Aboriginal‐Australian communities use language in characteristic ways and the values so encoded stand in a particular social relation to the values encoded in the mathematical registers of English; acknowledging this is an important first step in developing mathematics programmes for Aboriginal children. Within this framework the problems of mathematics education for Aboriginal‐Australian children are analysed.