Teacher preparation for primary mathematics in a bilingual, rural context in South Africa

Abstract: In South Africa, although school language policy expects that the majority of early grade teachers should teach mathematics in an African language, initial teacher education programmes are offered in English. To investigate bilingual sense making of mathematics, students in their first year of a teacher training programme wrote the same mathematics test in two languages: English and isiXhosa, as part of the national assessment. Data from 88 student teachers revealed that their performance was better in the English version of the test. The majority of the students (69%) preferred the English version of the test. The study recommends that universities need to pay far greater attention to the teaching of mathematics in isiXhosa for the early grades