How pre-service primary teachers support academic literacy in mathematics in a scriptwriting task encompassing fraction multiplication and division

•The pre-service teachers tended to focus on explaining calculations and procedures.•Secondly, support centered on explaining meanings of terms and procedures.•Less support was geared towards grammatical and lexical aspects of the task.•Cluster A emphasized the reporting of procedures, whereas cluster C demonstrated a focus on explaining meaning.•Cluster B prioritized both reporting procedures and explaining meaning. Developing academic literacy in mathematics instruction is challenging for most mathematics teachers, requiring more than vocabulary and grammar assistance with a focus instead on building discourse competence. This research utilizes a teaching simulation called the scriptwriting task, in which pre-service teachers are asked to identify student conceptions in a fictional classroom situation concerning fraction multiplication and division and write a script pertaining to the situation, enabling the examination of pre-service teacher moves to support students engage in mathematical discourse. Over half of the teacher moves involved explaining procedural aspects, whereas approximately 10 percent contained lexical supports. In a cluster analysis of the types of teacher moves used by the of pre-service teachers, three groups emerged regarding how they supported the students, focusing predominantly on (1) reporting procedure, (2) explaining meaning, or (3) a mix of both reporting procedure and explaining meaning, with few instances overall of lexical and syntactical supports.