Discourse analytic perspectives on STEM education : exploring interaction and learning in the multilingual classroom

Abstract

This volume explores the nature of discourse in secondary and upper elementary mathematics and science classrooms. Chapters examine conditions that support or hinder teachers and students, in particular language learners, in employing language as a tool for learning. The volume provides rich oral and written language examples from a range of classroom contexts to illustrate how linguistic practices affect students' appropriation and display of disciplinary specific knowledge. Chapters further explore linguistic practices through with the support of discourse analytic models that foreground the authentic classroom data with the aim of understanding the dynamics of the classroom. The authors investigate the intersection between discourse and learning from a range of perspectives, including an examination of key concepts such as intertextuality, interaction, mediation, scaffolding, appropriation, and adaptations. This volume offers concrete suggestions on how teachers might benefit from a discourse approach to teaching in the areas of mathematics and science. Chapter 1. Introduction by Juliet Langman and Holly Hansen Thomas -- Part I Examining learners' appropriation through discourse in diverse math and science classroom settings -- Chapter 2. 'What's the moment thingy?'- On the emergence of subject-specific knowledge in CLIL classroom interaction by Tarja Nikula -- Chapter 3. Reading a Graph of Motion: How Multiple Textual Resources Mediate Student Interpretations of Horizontal Segments by Judit Moschkovich, William Zahner and Tamara Ball -- Chapter 4. When Procedure Limits Practice: Lab Versus Lecture in High School Science Classrooms by Kerrie Enright and Carrie Strohl -- Chapter 5. Learner agency and academic discourse in a sheltered-immersion mathematics class by Daniel Ginsberg -- Chapter 6. "Negativo por negativo me va dar un ... POSITIvo": Translanguaging as a Vehicle for Appropriation of Mathematical Meanings by Armando Garza -- Part II Expanding the context: Considering Cultural Reproduction in the math classroom -- Chapter 7. Mathematical texts, alterity and the expropriation of mathematical discourse in second language mathematics classrooms by Richard Barwell -- Chapter 8. Whose mirror? Cultural reproduction in mathematics word problems by Anita Bright -- Part III Applying Discourse based approaches to Teacher Preparation in Science -- Chapter 9. Developing Oral Science Explanations: Secondary School ELs' Experimentation with Intertextual Linkages by Holly Hansen-Thomas and Juliet Langman -- Chapter 10. Demystifying the Discourse of Science for Elementary Grade English Learners by Marco Bravo -- Chapter 11. Adaptation and the Language of Learning Science in a Bilingual Classroom by Jorge L. Solís.