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Mathematics Education in Bilingual Contexts: Irish-English, Breton-French Caroline Poisard, Maire Ni Riordain, Erwan Le Pipec

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Mathematics Education in Bilingual Contexts: Irish-English, Breton-French Caroline Poisard, Maire Ni Riordain, Erwan Le Pipec Mathematics education in bilingual contexts: Irish-English, Breton-French Caroline Poisard, Maire Ni Riordain, Erwan Le Pipec To cite this version: Caroline Poisard, Maire Ni Riordain, Erwan Le Pipec. Mathematics education in bilingual contexts: Irish-English, Breton-French. CERME 9 - Ninth Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education, Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Education; ERME, Feb 2015, Prague, Czech Republic. pp.1468-1474. hal-01287778 HAL Id: hal-01287778 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01287778 Submitted on 14 Mar 2016 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Mathematics education in bilingual contexts: Irish-English, Breton-French Caroline Poisard1, Máire Ní Ríordáin2 and Erwan Le Pipec1 1 UBO, ESPE de Bretagne, Bretagne, France, [email protected] 2 National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland Irish and Breton are both Celtic languages but unity tactical context; ‘declined’ prepositions; word order, has vanished resulting in deep linguistic differences. etc.). Numbers are also a domain where a very old con- But the common heritage is still at hand when one tinuity can be traced, as will be shown in this paper. considers the lexicon, grammatical peculiarities and These two languages are spoken in a bilingual context, number. The concept of the structure of a language im- involving either a Germanic language: English, or a pacting on thought processes is referred to as the lin- Romance one: French. This is the first investigation guistic-relativity hypothesis, which proposes that the of its nature into the Irish and Breton languages and vocabulary and phraseology of a particular language given the rise in Irish-and Breton-medium education influences the thinking and perception of speakers of it is timely and can contribute to the development of this language, and that each language will have a dif- policy in this area. ferent cognitive system. This paper examines the Irish and Breton languages in their bilingual context, their In this paper we present a preliminary study which linguistic characteristics and impact on mathematics builds on two previous research studies in the two learning in comparison to English and French, while commented contexts (Ní Ríordáin, 2013; Poisard et al., identifying future research requirements. 2014), with the aim of identifying future comparative studies. We focus here on languages features and the Keywords: Bilingual contexts, Irish-English, Breton-French, potential of language as a resource for teaching (Adler, linguistic differences. 2001), while examining fundamental questions about relationships between mathematics and language (Barton, 2008). Taking into account that language INTRODUCTION reflects the way we see the world and that mathemat- ics is a modelisation of the world, our questions are: Irish and Breton are both Celtic languages, spoken in What are the features of languages that may be of the western ends of Europe, namely in Ireland and importance for mathematics teaching and learning? in the western half of Brittany (France). The Celtic How can language be a potential resource for teach- languages are divided into two branches: the gaelic ing? How to identify mathematical particularities in one (the native languages of Ireland, Scotland and linguistic expression? the Isle of Man) and the brythonic one (comprising Welsh, Cornish and Breton). Accordingly, these lan- LANGUAGE CONTEXTS guages might have once been the same language or at least, two dialects of the same language. Nevertheless, The history of Irish and Breton is marred by stories centuries have passed by and unity has vanished, re- of decline and persecution. However, both languages sulting in deep linguistic differences. However, the have experienced parallel revivals at various times. common heritage is still at hand when one consid- Since the 90’s on, there is more and more concern in ers the lexicon (roughly 5 000 shared words, those both populations to revitalize their languages and expressing very old notions such as a house: teach/ avoid complete extinction (Le Pipec, 2013). Strategies ti; weather: aimsir/amzer; good: maith/mat, etc.) and have been and are being designed at state or near-state grammatical peculiarities (mutations of initial conso- level to revitalize them, primarily by supporting them nants to distinguish word gender; mutations in syn- as medium of education. Table 1 provides a summary CERME9 (2015) – TWG09 1468 Mathematics education in bilingual contexts: Irish-English, Breton-French (Caroline Poisard, Máire Ní Ríordáin and Erwan Le Pipec) Number of primary and second- Type of schools Total of students ary students Bilingual public schools 6 662 Breton-medium Bilingual catholic schools 4 971 15 338 education Diwan schools 3 705 Irish-medium Maintenance heritage language 15 546 56 974 education Immersion 41 428 Table 1: A comparison between Irish and Breton educational contexts of the number of students learning through the me- programmes exist. Accordingly, teachers in Irish- and dium of Breton and Irish. Breton- medium schools may not have high standard of Irish/Breton themselves, nor have an understand- Breton schools are part of the centralised educational ing of the complexities of teaching and learning math- system of France and the teaching of Breton is option- ematics in a bilingual context. Therefore, it is not sur- al. There are over 15,000 pupils learning through the prising that teachers report difficulty in supporting medium of Breton (with an average growth of 4 to 5% the language development element of mathematics per year), ranging from pre-school to secondary level teaching and learning and a lack of suitable resources (OPLB, 2014). There are three types of Breton-medium and textbooks to support their work (Poisard et al., schools that pupils can attend, distinguishable by two 2014). ways of utilising the languages. The ‘bilingual schools’ (Public or Catholic) devote the same amount of time THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK to each language. On the other hand, Diwan schools claim to be ‘immersive’ schools since Breton is only Bilingual education research shows that using two in use during the first four years of schooling. French or more languages to learn and teach is not a simple is then introduced by the age of 7 to 8 and takes up to addition of languages that enable someone to use half of school time by age 11. one language or another (Cummins, 1984). Indeed, linguistic competencies and learning strategies are Irish-medium education is the norm for those grow- involved simultaneously and bi-/multilingualism is ing up in the Gaeltacht regions in Ireland (mainte- seen as a “language-sensitive approach of content” nance heritage language education). The rise in (Bernaus et al., 2012). In our work we see bilingualism popularity of primary (Gaelscoileanna) and second as a particular form of multilingualism. level (Gaelcholáistí) immersion education (Irish- medium education outside of Gaeltacht regions) is The concept of the structure of a language impacting significant and has seen an increase in excess of 60% on thought processes is referred to as the linguistic-rel- over the past decade. Currently, approximately 8% ativity hypothesis (Whorf, 1956). The basic premise of of the primary level population and 4% of the second this hypothesis is that the vocabulary and phraseol- level population are learning through the medium ogy of a particular language influences the thinking of Irish (Gaelscoileanna Teo, 2014). In Ireland, there and perception of speakers of this language, and that is an adequate supply of suitably qualified teachers conceptions not encoded in their language will not be at the primary level due to incentives and a strong available to them. Hence, they are proposing that each history of native speakers pursuing a career in pri- language will have a different cognitive system and mary teaching. However, at second level education that this cognitive system will influence the speaker’s there is a shortage of suitably qualified teachers to perception of concepts (Whorf, 1956). Whorf empha- deliver the specific subject areas of mathematics, sci- sises also that we act according to how we describe ence and foreign languages through the medium of things, and accordingly different languages may clas- Irish. Similar problems arise in Brittany. However, at sify experience in different ways. Therefore, in the- primary level a shortage of skilled speakers willing ory, an Irish speaker/learner should have a different to become teachers can be observed. Moreover, no cognitive system to that of an English speaker/learner, specificqualification is required for teaching through influence our actions and accordingly may influence the medium of Irish/Breton at primary or second level mathematical understanding. For example, Miura education, although some specific teacher education and colleagues (1994, p. 410) contend that ‘numerical 1469 Mathematics education in bilingual contexts: Irish-English, Breton-French (Caroline Poisard,
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