Learning from diversity: Communication, conflict and mathematics education in the multicultural classroom

Conflicts refer to contradictions and to problematic and worrying issues. At the same time conflicts include opportunities for development and learning. We consider a conflict as a social and a cultural phenomenon as well as being an aspect of the content of learning. Thus, conflicts can emerge in the production of meaning for students. Our concept of conflict is socio-epistemological. We concentrate the investigating on episodes from few mathematics classrooms, which by the teacher and the school are considered multicultural as well and overburdened with conflicts. We want to investigate how conflicts make part of the communication in the multicultural classroom - and such communications may at the same time resource learning. Observations and analyses will be discusses with the involved students, parents and teachers The project will be related to studies of multicultural learning in Brazil, South Africa, Spain and the USA. We intend the projects to provide a theoretical development within the field, for instance by elaborating how the Institutional System of Mathematics Education might provide obstruction or facilitate "learning from diversities". Furthermore, we want to develop further the notion of dialogic learning, which we have developed with respect to the Inquiry-Cooperation Model.