Designing Embedded Language and Literacy Supports for Developmental Mathematics Teaching and Learning

• In Event: Creating Contexts of Pedagogical and Curricular Support for Non-English-Background Students in Mathematics and Science

Abstract

Description and Objectives
For the past two years, members of the Carnegie Foundation’s Language and Literacy team have engaged in a research and design effort to identify, address, and minimize language and literacy barriers in two year-long developmental mathematics curricula - Statway™, a statistics course, and Quantway™ a quantitative reasoning course. The team had two aims. First, it sought to create considerate text (Armbruster 1984; Gomez & Gomez, 2007) allowing students to engage with complex problems and texts and to participate in the discourse of mathematics. Second, it aimed to provide instructors with practical and educative tools and routines to best meet the needs of traditionally underserved mathematics learners.

Theoretical frame
Mathematics learning is a social practice “in which teachers and learners use language as a resource with which to construct mathematical meanings” (Chapman, 1993, p. 3). If we accept this premise, then research, design, and practice must be pointed towards the need for instructional attention to the language of mathematics (Moschkovich, 2010; Witin & Witin, 2000). We are guided by frameworks which consider the linguistic complexity of the mathematics register (Halliday 1978, Scheleppegrell, 2007), and the value of strategic literacy instructional supports for traditionally underserved STEM learners.

Methods
To achieve our aim, we engaged in a systematic, analytic approach to reviewing each Quantway™ and Statway™ lesson and assessment. We completed independent lesson reviews for the purpose of calibration, as well as to understand the types of language and literacy issues to which team members attended. We then discussed revisions and underlying rationales that guided changes to each lesson, and sought to document, categorize, and calculate the patterns of, and frequency of, the types of revisions and recommendations we made to the curricula. We also identified the conceptual supports inherent in the revisions, and then developed a taxonomy of literacy revisions and recommendations. Based on these recommendations we derived a set design principles.

Results and Conclusions
Three practical theories, related to the role of language in instructional materials, emerged from this initial analytic design and research effort. First, mathematics instructional materials are implicated in students’ language-related difficulties. Second, instructional materials and practices need to consider students’ diverse language and literacy skills. Third, instructional materials can be designed to provide mathematics instructors with specific guidance in supporting the language and literacy needs of mathematics students. In the symposium, we will discuss the import of these design principles, and practical theories, for guiding the design of strategic literacy support tools, (Gomez & Gomez, 2007) and eight instructional routines, embedded in Quantway™ and Statway™.

Scholarly Significance
Our two-year research and design effort has led to design principles, practical theories, the design of eight instructional routines, and strategic, reading to learn tools for students. Our revisions are now part of the Quantway™ and Statway™ mathematics materials in over 40 community colleges. Future research and design efforts will incorporate feedback from Statway™ and Quantway™ instructors about the language and literacy modified materials and will shape our future language and literacy design and recommendation efforts.

Authors

• Kimberley Gomez, University of California - Los Angeles

• Maritza Lozano, University of California - Los Angeles