{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.014164305949008499, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.973684210526316, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Language: A Cultural Capital for Conceptualizing Mathematics Knowledge

Mathematics education in South Africa is in crisis. Students continue to perform at a lower level compared to other nations including those with low GPD compared to them. Two factors have been highlighted in research that impedes mathematics learning: teacher content knowledge and irrelevant teaching strategies. This study contributes to this literature by investigating five African (from a former White school) fifth grade students’ learning of length measurement with the aim of eliciting the students’ thinking levels by using a length learning trajectory. Clinical interviews and teaching experiments were employed for a comprehensive description of these students’ processes. The findings reveal that students’ mother tongue is a psychological tool that enriches their mathematics learning process, learning trajectory assisted in analysing students developmental processes with language and poor number development impeded abstraction in learning of length measurement concepts.