Complex Listening and Number Sense: Evidence From Bilingual Classrooms

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Discourse and Social Interactions in Mathematics Lessons

Abstract

“Big numbers” intimidate students. This intimidation seems to affect problem solving strategy selection and the ability to solve problems successfully. Honoring the complex nature of number sense, two teachers and a mathematics education researcher interviewed fourth and fifth grade Latino/a bilingual students about how they understood the numbers in problems, including the emotions those number combinations evoked. After listening to students’ perspectives, the teachers and students engaged for one academic year in co-creating learning environments in their classrooms that fostered the development of number sense. Results suggest the need to envision number sense as a complex system whose development requires complex listening that yields common resources for both students and teachers in bilingual classrooms.

Author

• Higinio Dominguez, Michigan State University