TEACHING MATHEMATICS BILINGUALLY: A TEACHING DILEMMA IN TATAR SCHOOLS IN RUSSIA

The report reveals the pedagogical dilemma in the Tatar language schools in Russia where teachers face the problem of teaching mathematics and information and communications technologies in two languages - Russian and Tatar. Tatarstan is one of the republics of Russia and 53% of population is Tatar. There are two official languages, Tatar and Russian. Russian, nevertheless, is the language of government and economic exchange, and hence the language of access and power. Russian remains the most common language in urban areas of Tatarstan.

On the one hand in Tatar schools the language of instruction is Tatar and the majority of school lessons including mathematics and information and communications technologies (ICT) are taught in Tatar.

On the other hand, Unified State Exams (USE) are held all over Russian Federation in Russian language only, thus there is a crucial need to teach non-native Russian speakers in Russian, because knowledge of mathematical and ICT terms in Russian helps students to understand and complete USE tasks. Tatar school’s teachers viewed bilingual education as an idea to overcome these drawbacks.

Research focuses on analysis of data taken from experiments conducted in Tatar-language school. Four lessons from two mathematics teachers were observed and video-recorded. According to the interpretive approach adopted in this study qualitative data were collected via video-recorded lessons and interviews with teachers.