The aim of this article is to illustrate how Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) can be used as methodological tool for analysing the meaning of texts from two different studies. An analysis using SFL provides insights into how different concepts of mathematical literacy operate in the text. SFL considers language to be a resource used for expressing meaning in specific contexts that accomplishes specific communication purposes. Therefore, SFL contains opportunities for highlighting different aspects of mathematics education which are of interest to researchers. In Sweden, the SFL approach has been used in other research areas but references to it in mathematics education research have been limited.

Students’ pre-knowledge and conceptual development in analysis were investigated at a teacher education program to reveal what pre-knowledge endured and how the students perceived the concepts a year after the course had ended. Questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data. Two students’ results are presented in more detail in the article. The study was cognitively framed with the influence of situated theories to take as many aspects of concept development into account as possible. The students showed numerous connections between concepts, but they were often unable to discern valid links from invalid links. The perceived richness from many connections causes unjustifiably strong self-confidence which prevents further work with the concept. A tool for classification of the students’ connections between concepts resulted from the analysis.

Students at a Swedish university were subjects in a study about learning limits of functions. The students' perceptions were investigated in terms of traces of concept images through interviews and problem solving. The results imply that most students' foundations were not sufficiently strong for them to understand the concept of limit well enough to be able to form coherent concept images. The traces of the students' concept images reveal confusion about different features of the limit concept.

We compared five groups of students to investigate the effects of ”Just-in-time teaching” (JiTT), a method designed to both help students keep up with the often fast pace of undergraduate calculus and to deepen their learning. In total, 137 students participated in the study. The outcome is discussed in terms of conceptual and procedural knowledge in relation to examination and other assessment tasks. We observed an improvement on the assessed items and a shift in study habits.

Reading and comprehending mathematics textbooks means understanding the global meaning and for this to occur successful comprehension strategies are required. Drawing on the results of a pilot study with six grade 3 students, a relationship between the students’ reading skills and their mathematical skills appeared. Toexamine this relationship further eighteen students from grades 1, 4 and 7, with different achievement levels were interviewed in this study. Both in the pilot study andin the current study the interview questions were inspired by the comprehensionstrategies of prediction, clarification, questioning and summarization from Palincsar and Brown’s reciprocal teaching model. These strategies are connected to Halliday’s Systemic functional linguistics to better understand how the textbook context affects students’ use of comprehension strategies. The results show that all students had developed reading comprehension strategies that were more or less successful, starting already from grade 1. Furthermore, the results of this study highlight that all students, independent of their achievement level or grade, require explicit teaching concerning efficient comprehension strategies to grasp the mathematical content being presented in mathematics textbooks.