Exploring Teachers’ Insights on Teaching Students Reading to Learn Mathematics

Abstract

The ability to read to learn mathematics is prominent for students not only for them to become independent learners but also to develop their mathematical literacy skills. This is a phenomenography study conducted to describe mathematics teachers’ perspectives on teaching mathematics reading, teaching strategies of mathematics reading they applied in classes, and their perspectives on high-quality mathematics textbooks. The study involved 20 mathematics teachers from 8 high schools in Aceh Province as participants. Data were obtained from semi-structured interviews and an open-ended questionnaire that was subsequently analysed using the content analysis technique. The results showed that there were three different perspectives on teaching mathematics reading, i.e., important and effective, important but less effective, and important but ineffective. The teachers in the first category tended to use teaching strategies that involved both teachers’ and students’ activities, while they preferred textbooks that provided complete and detailed discussions of contents. The teachers in the second category tended to use strategies that mostly involved teachers’ activities, while they did not show a specific preference for textbook characteristics. The teachers in the last category stated that they had never applied reading mathematics strategies in their classes. They preferred mathematics textbooks that discuss contents briefly and provide many exercises.