Reading Graphs of Motion: How Multiple Textual Resources Mediate Student Interpretations of Horizontal Segments

Abstract

This chapter analyzes interpretations of a graph of motion by bilingual adolescents using multiple representations of motion: a written story, a graph, and an oral description. The chapter uses a socio-cultural conceptual framework, complex views of language and academic literacy in mathematics, and assumes that mathematical discourse is multi-modal and multi-semiotic. Data from a bilingual classroom and transcript excerpts illustrate the multimodal and multi-semiotic nature of mathematical language. The analysis describes how pairs of students interpreted stories of bicycle trips using multiple modes, sign systems, and texts. The analysis examines how multiple modes provided tools for students to make sense of mathematical ideas and how inter-textuality functioned as students negotiated the mathematical meaning of motion through multiple texts (graphs, written questions, written responses, and oral discussions). We describe how four pairs of eighth-grade bilingual students interpreted horizontal segments on a distance versus time graph as they answered questions using a story about a bicycle trip. While students shifted between two interpretations (moving and not moving) of the three horizontal segments above the x-axis, pairs interpreted the segment located on the x-axis as representing the biker not moving. We examine how students shifted among alternative interpretations of the horizontal segments and describe how the graph and the written text mediated these student interpretations.