Abstract

Abstract

A wide variety of studies on public schools located in priority educational zones (ZEPs or at-risk schools) in France detail the socio-educational challenges arising in these classrooms (cite). The last decade in France has seen increasing South Asian, East Asian, Slavic and Middle Eastern immigration, nationwide debates on French public educational reforms, policy reforms enacted after rioting in Fall 2005 by immigrant youth in the suburbs of several French cities, and recent political changes in France affecting support for at-risk schools, immigrant status, and youth employment. Given these ongoing developments, further research is needed on how neo-Francophones with symbol-based heritage languages learn to succeed in French math classrooms, since French end-of-course, baccalaureat exams are open-ended and thus high school math instruction tends to rely upon both content area knowledge and academic language proficiency (cite).

This paper reviews the current literature on programs and strategies for effectively modifying instructional practices in ZEP schools to help neo-Francophones from symbol-based heritage languages like Chinese, Arabic, and Hebrew enhance their cognitive links to advanced math reasoning. Based on the literature reviewed, inclusion of these instructional strategies may benefit both neo-Francophone and mainstream math students in both regular and ZEP-situated public school classrooms (cite).