Adversities in teaching learning mathematics in cultural diverse classroom
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Department of Mathematics Education
Abstract
This study is about “Adversities in Teaching Learning Mathematics in Cultural Diverse Classroom”. Linguistic, ethnic and gender diversity is the realistic picture of Nepalese secondary mathematics classroom as Nepal is a ‘bawl of salad’ for more than 126 linguistic communities and more than 61 ethnic communities. The Mathematics teacher should therefore be aware of these diversities and adversities inside a classroom. Culturally diverse students regarding ethnicity, language and gender should be especially treated to guarantee the right to education. The main difficulty of the students from ethnic community, non-Nepali mother tongue and girl students are lack of guidance and sufficient time at home, problem to catch the pace of teachers, linguistic tone and internal fear or shyness. Taking cultural diversity as a boon, a teacher can make a classroom interesting, gender-friendly, culture-friendly and encourage them for better performance. A teacher can play a pivotal role to reduce discrimination and empower the students from ethnically, linguistically and gender minorities through the application by appropriate teaching methods and materials, teacher training, collaborative and group teaching, peer learning, constructive teaching learning, life like examples and knowledge of other culture etc. It is a qualitative ethnographic research design focused on the problems faced by the teachers and students in multicultural classroom. Fifteen participants were selected by using judgmental purposive sampling. The major tools of data collection were interview and classroom observation. The study site was Kathmandu district where we can find variety in language and culture.