Developing mathematics teaching units for migrant students

"<< Background >>The multicultural nature of classrooms is a significant challenge in many European countries. Teachers are usually not sufficiently prepared to deal with a classroom context with pupils having a migrant background, coming from countries with different cultures and different languages. Teaching materials focusing on migrant students do exist, but mostly for languages, not for mathematics. Mathematics teachers feel the necessity for training and materials which reflect the needs of their students in terms of linguistic and cultural differences. Their students with a migrant background encounter specific difficulties in acquiring fundamental maths skills. The seven partners of this project are four teacher training and research institutions and three schools. They developed ready-to-use teaching units and concepts for teaching units; teachers in partner schools applied these concepts to create concrete teaching units and taught those units. Partners then created case studies, summarizing the strategies teachers used to make the units work for their migrant and non-migrant students. This gives mathematics teachers a guideline with possible strategies, as well as information how other teachers turned the concepts into concrete units.<< Objectives >>It is the objective of this project to develop, evaluate, revise, finalise, publish and disseminate ready-to-use teaching units in mathematics for primary, lower and upper secondary level schools, specifically designed for migrant students. It is also the objective of this project to develop and evaluate teaching unit concepts (scaffolds or outlines that contain a theoretical framework and anchor points; they can then be used to create full-fledged teaching units for specific classrooms, with various contexts and mathematical topics). It is another objective to let mathematics teachers create and teach concrete teaching units (based on the teaching unit concepts) for their specific classrooms, and for mathematics educators to observe, record and evaluate the teaching, analyse the different strategies teachers used to turn the given concepts into teaching units, and create “good practice” guidelines from that. It is finally the objective to organize and execute a final international conference, regional workshops, and teacher training events in partner and non-parnter countries.<< Implementation >>The project team created draft versions (in English) of ready-to-use teaching units in mathematics, and of teaching unit concepts, in university/school teams, had other partners and an external expert cross-check and evaluate these drafts, finalised and translated them into Czech, German, Greek, and Italian, and published them on the project website.The school partners then took these concepts and used them to create full sample teaching units for their own classrooms and teach those, and staff from university/research partners observed these lessons. The university/research partners conducted interviews with and/or provided questionnaires to teachers from school partners, and with/to school students who participated in these lessons, and analysed this data. The results of this process have then be compiled into case studies. The different strategies teachers used to turn the given concepts into teaching units that worked for their classrooms and their framework were then analysed and the results summarised iinto guidelines for other teachers who want to use the concepts to create teaching units for their own classrooms. The project team also organised a final conference with workshops to present the project results and to work with teachers and teacher trainers from various countries, organised regional workshops in the partner countries and teacher training events together with additional institutions from non-partner-countries, and disseminated the project results using a wide variety of regional, national, and international dissemination channels.<< Results >>The main project outputs are:* 46 ready-to-use teaching units in mathematics (each consisting of an introduction with basic information, a schedule/time matrix, and all necessary teaching materials; each teaching unit is for 1-2 lessons of 45-50 minutes) specifically designed for students with a variety of migrant backgrounds* 10 descriptions of concepts for teaching units in mathematics* 20 case studies (2 per teaching unit concept; each consisting of full teaching units created by teachers of school partners based on the concepts, an analysis of questionnaire/interviews conducted after the teaching unit with teachers and school students, and improvement suggestions based on interviews/questionnaires and external evaluators' opinion)Other results are:* ""good practice"" guidelines (summary of the analysis of teachers' strategies to create new teaching units based on the teaching unit concepts, with didactical comment)* a website with project information and all results for free download: https://www.mathformigrants.eu/* A variety of information, dissemination, and training events (final conference, regional workshops, teacher training events)* a folder with basic project information and sample project results"