Developing Awareness Around Language Practices in the Elementary Bilingual Mathematics Classroom

Abstract

This study contributes to efforts to characterize teaching that is responsive to children’s mathematical ideas and linguistic repertoire. Building on translanguaging, defined in this article as a pedagogical practice that facilitates students’ expression of their understanding using their own language practices, and on the literature surrounding children’s mathematical thinking, we present an example of a one-on-one interview and of the circulating portion of a mathematics class from a second-grade classroom. We use these examples to foreground instructional practices, for researchers and practitioners, that highlight a shift from a simplified view of conveying mathematics as instruction in symbology and formal manipulation to a more academically ample discussion of perspectives that investigate critically both mathematical concepts and their modes of transmission, which involve language practices, that are crucial for educating bilingual children.