Genre-based socialization practices in teaching and learning of geometric proof in language diverse classrooms

Abstract

The present study reports on analysis of how two teachers in Lebanon, and their students navigated the learning and teaching of geometric proof in English, in a context in which Lebanese Arabic is the language of home and wider society. One of the teachers taught in a public school, the other in a private school. The study focuses on language socialization practices in the two grade-seven classrooms, in relation to the specific genre of geometric proof. The focus is not directly on proving as a cognitive process; rather, the study explores the interactional process of interpreting and constructing geometric proofs as a form of textual organization. This focus is consistent with the theoretical framing in which learning mathematics is understood as a process of socialization into mathematical discourses, of which the proof genre is a part. The findings reveal four main sets of socialization practices in relation to the genre of geometric proof. These sets of practices were guiding, obtaining information, deducing and attending to accuracy and precision