Monolingual classrooms are far from being the norm in many countries. For example, one in ten students in United States are recorded as having English Language Learners (ELL) (National Center for Education Statistics, 2015), while in Sweden, one fourth of primary school children have migration background (Skolverket, 2024). Although these two countries may not have a globally accepted definition of English Language Learner (ELL) or migrant, such statistics illustrate that language diverse classrooms are increasingly common in different parts of the world.  

Mathematics, despite a common myth that it is a universal, language and culture free subject (Sfard, 2013), is a school subject where students learn to think and communicate mathematically through their language resources (Barwell et al., 2016).  Similar to Moschkovich (2021, p.62), we draw from a sociolinguistic framework and understand language as a ‘socio-cultural-historical activity, not something that can either be mathematical or not, universal or not’. Hence, language diverse mathematics classrooms are where languages of learners, languages of teachers and languages of mathematics intersect. Especially after the 1980s, language diversity has started to be seen as resource by many researchers (Moschkovich, 2021). As such, how teachers would use such source in classrooms have attracted much attention (e.g. Planas, Morgan, & Schütte, 2021) as they are often seen key agents who mediate curriculum in their language diverse classrooms (Adler, 2002). 

In our review, we draw from a recent curriculum making heuristic developed by Priestley et al. (2021) that understands curriculum making as social and relational practices occurring in different sites of education and engaging various curriculum making actors. Curriculum making sites are seen not linear nor hierarchical, which highlights the relationality of curriculum making as different actors interact with each other with particular purposes. Nano curriculum making refers socially constructed activities and events that emerge from teacher-student interactions in the classroom to achieve curriculum goals (Doyle, 1992; Priestley et al., 2022). Drawing from these ideas, we turn our attention to teachers as key actors of nano curriculum making practices and shed light into what practices documented in language diverse mathematics classrooms as teachers work with their students to achieve curriculum goals.

Although there have been several reviews exploring the intersection of language, mathematics learning, and teaching practices in multilingual settings, this study differs from and contributes to earlier reviews with at least two reasons. First, our review delves deeper into teachers’ nano curriculum making practices in language diverse mathematics classrooms complementing the most recent review similar to ours (i.e., Gallagher & Scrivner, 2024). Their review examined teachers' beliefs about language diversity and multilingual learners in the K-12 context. Second, our review sheds light into teachers’ practices in particular and without geographic restrictions while Roberts, Willey, and Zahner (2018) reviewed students’ learning, and McLachlan and Essien (2022) reviewed studies conducted in South African context.

Given the increasing language diverse classrooms across many countries globally, this review examined empirical studies involving teachers' nano curriculum practices as reflected in classroom interactions and map out practices addressing language diversity in different contexts. To this end, the research aims to answer the following question: 

What are teachers’ nano curriculum making practices in language diverse classrooms?

Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) procedures (Moher et al., 2009), we used three main databases, Web of Science, Scopus and ERIC, to examine empirical studies that were published between 2000-2024. Starting from 2000 aligns with research influenced by the NCTM Standards document (2000) which highlights communication as a key focus in mathematics classrooms. The keywords and operators were ‘mathematics’ AND (‘education’ OR ‘teaching’ OR ‘learning’) AND (‘language’ OR ‘linguistic’) AND (‘EAL’ OR ‘ELL’ OR ‘Bilingual’ OR ‘multilingual’ OR ‘diversity’ OR ‘diverse’) for the search of empirical studies in English without restricting publication geography. While we examined classroom practice studies involving teacher student interaction, our primary focus was on teachers' curriculum making practices regarding teaching and learning mathematics in a language diversity context. Therefore, we excluded the studies having a focus on teacher beliefs, attitudes or perceptions rather than practices, students learning. We also excluded studies focused on subjects or fields other than mathematics, and studies that addressed broader frameworks of diverse learners, where language diversity was one aspect among other dimensions. Finally, applying our inclusion and exclusion criteria, we analysed 20 empirical studies examining teachers’ nano curriculum making practices in primary language diverse mathematics classrooms. We employed a reflexive thematic analysis following the six stages: familiarisation, generating codes, constructing themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and writing up (Braun & Clarke, 2021). We familiarised ourselves with the studies’ contexts and approaches to language diversity, then classified them by methodology (e.g., data sources) and main findings. The first and second authors independently reviewed randomly selected two studies and listed all the practices documented in each. Reflexive discussions were held comparing, contrasting and collating the practices identified in the two studies. Following, the first author developed codes for the practices, assigned different colours corresponding to different themes in each study, to identify practices supported by evidence excerpts. The second author categorised the codes thematically, and all authors met regularly to finalise the categories and discuss what example practices might provide the best comprehensive picture of the reviewed articles.

In the following, we present our emerging findings on teachers’ nano curriculum making practices in language diversity contexts. We present teachers’ nano curriculum making practices in three categories that draw from our definition of language diversity in mathematics (Barwell et al., 2016) – languages of students; languages of instruction and languages of mathematics. Each category includes our findings from the reviewed studies. We outline teachers' practices related to students' languages, including those responsive to home language use, and the cultural and contextual relevance of mathematics. Additionally, we examine teachers' practices related to the languages of instruction, in the aspects of vocabulary focus, engagement, and linguistic variations. Lastly, we categorise teachers' curriculum making practices related to the languages of mathematics, including mathematical discourse and multimodal approaches like visuals, gestures, and manipulatives. While we will present categories and sub-categories for analytical purposes, there are often cross overs between the nature of those practices. We found while there were convergences of some vocabulary building related practices (e.g., providing sentence frames to support students’ use of mathematical vocabulary, asking students to generate definitions and examples to be recorded in their maths journals), there were also divergences in some of the curriculum making practices in which students’ home languages and cultural resources are integrated (e.g., discouraging the use of home languages, using cognates, using short phrases in students’ home languages). In our presentation, we aim to present the overview of teachers’ nano curriculum making practices, which will be discussed in relation to their specific contexts and relevant literature.

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