DEALING WITH MULTILINGUALISM IN THE ARITHMETIC CLASS An Ethnographic Case Study of a Dutch Primary School

This paper focuses on the ways in which a teacher at a Dutch primary school deals with multilingual school populations in everyday practice. An illustrative episode from an arithmetic lesson is discussed that was observed in a classroom of seven-year-old, first and second language learners of Dutch, in which they are taught to split up addends. The analysis points at the algorithmic problem solving strategy the teacher adopts, which structures the interaction into IRF-sequences and obscure problems of understanding. Among other factors, the subtle nuances of meaning conveyed through the teacher’s language of instruction seem to have contributed to these problems of understanding. 1