Leveraging Bilingualism in an After-School Mathematics Club: An Examination of Design and Interactions

• In Event: 35.068 - Translanguaging and Mathematics: Recognizing and Capitalizing on the Brilliance of Bilingual Children

Abstract

This paper reports on a study designed to showcase Latinx bilingual children’s linguistic and cultural resources for learning mathematics in an after-school mathematics club. Specifically, we examine the design of the activity system (Engstrom, 1999) and social interactions therein through a translanguaging perspective in which students leverage their language and culture to engage in mathematical learning.  Our primary objective is to highlight some to the triumphs and struggles of bilingual children as they expand communicative practices and mathematical resources via interactions with bilingual facilitators and electronic communication with a math wizard, El Maga.
We draw on translanguaging to reconceptualize bilingualism as a liberating and empowering communicative practice, capable of transforming learning, that goes beyond students’ transition to the dominate school language (MacSwan, 2017), and makes up bilinguals’ linguistic repertoire (Cenoz, 2017). García (2017) posits, “…speakers use their languaging, bodies, multimodal resources, tools and artifacts in dynamically entangled, interconnected and coordinated ways to make meaning” (p. 258).  
Our research was conducted in a large, urban context, where the school population was 99.4% Latinx and 68% ELLs. Data was gathered in an after-school project guided by sociocultural theory and adapted after The Fifth Dimension (Cole, 2006) and La Clase Mágica (Vásquez, 2003). The after-school club was designed to provide Latinx experiences doing non-remedial mathematical activities in an environment that challenged traditional classroom experiences and promoted mathematical bi-literacy. Spanish was encouraged, and students communicated bilingually with El Maga about their mathematical experiences.
Participants included thirteen students, five undergraduate Latinx facilitators, four graduate facilitators, and five parents. Ethnographic methods were employed to capture the meaning participants made of engaging in mathematical activity through a translanguaging approach. Twenty sessions were video-recorded. Descriptive and reflective field-notes taken by undergraduate and graduate facilitators captured participants’ interactions as well as the facilitators’ reflections.  Student work and correspondence with El Maga were collected.
Findings show that language resources (e.g., L1) did not automatically surface or were observed to be used automatically. A pedagogy intentionally designed to build L1 in support of L2 was needed. Second, asking students who are already used to the exclusion of their home language in school, to reappropriate features of their home language in an afterschool setting proved challenging and took time. In addition, bilingual facilitators, especially those schooled in English, often expressed discomfort with doing math in Spanish. Persistence and explicit support from instructional leadership is key to maximizing opportunities for children to use Spanish when problem solving. We also found that when activities in the afterschool involved parents and community, L1 was more readily used by students and reclaimed for academic purposes.
The combination of foregrounding Spanish and incorporating families has a direct impact on how mathematical norms are socially (re)constructed, and ultimately how bilingual Latinx see themselves as competent mathematics learners. Furthermore, a consistent effort to redefine the role of Spanish in mathematical activity is critical to easing the discomfort, or unnaturalness, that has been built up historically and serves to cast mathematics as something to be done in English only.

Authors

• Craig J. Willey, Indiana University - Indianapolis

• Hector Morales, Northeastern Illinois University