Textbooks for Bilingual Mathematics Classrooms

This chapter is proposed as a response to the demand of research in the field of bilingual mathematics education, specifically centered on the analysis of bilingual teaching resources. Regarding the recent appearance of bilingual programs and the representativity bilingual centres currently have in the region of Andalusia (Spain), it is necessary to know the nature of the pedagogical resources that are being used. Thus, the authors selected three series of mathematics textbooks (bilingual and non-bilingual, for the 1st grade of secondary education) that were analyzed by classifying the set of mathematical activities they contain. For the comparison among textbooks, authors used a classification that splits the sample into seven different types of tasks. Additionally, for each task the level of cognitive demand was also indicated. The results show that, although there are slight differences between bilingual and monolingual books, most of the learning opportunities offered in all of them are based on routine activities rather than on more cognitively demanding problems.