Bilingual Teacher Candidates Analyzing Their Own Practice Through Videos: "How Does Language Influence My Teaching?"

• In Event: The Power and Possibility of Creating and Exploring Critical Mathematics Classroom Teaching Video Cases in Teacher Preparation Programs

Abstract

Most studies on children’s mathematical thinking (CMT) about fractions, and research based on teachers’ supporting and extending CMT, have been conducted in monolingual settings (see Empson, 1999; Empson & Levi, 2011; Empson, Levi, & Carpenter, 2011; Empson, Junk, Dominguez, & Turner, 2005; Jacobs & Empson, 2015). Several of these studies, pay particular attention to the teacher-student interaction in eliciting students’ mathematical ideas, arguing that to support and extend CMT teachers must encourage student expression of understanding while avoiding the imposition of the teacher’s perspective. For this reason, the present work highlights how teachers’ instructional decisions are impacted by their assumptions about language. This work, presents the use of video cases for supporting bilingual teacher candidates’ (BTCs’) development of their teaching practice focused on the impact that language use has in supporting and extending CMT in the context of the teaching and learning of fractions with bilingual elementary school students.

In mathematics methods courses designed for the preparation of English-Spanish BTCs, BTCs come to class with Eurocentric assumptions that the use of pictures, creating vocabulary lists, and providing different assessment forms are effective mathematical strategies for working with students whose first language is not English. However, these strategies provide little guidance in developing an understanding of mathematics content to students whose first language is not English (Moschkovich, 1999). Unfortunately, little has been found on how best to support the learning of BTCs that leverage children’s multiple mathematical knowledge bases and cultural identities. This study focuses on the use of video cases as a potential tool for identifying how language use by bilingual students and BTCs impacts their instructional decisions.

Twenty-eight BTCs provided open-ended, written reflections after watching their own videos interviewing 5th-grade students on learning fractions through story problems. These interviews occurred once a week for 30 minutes each, where the BTCs worked individually with the same student in posing story problems. Responses were coded using content analysis to identify patterns in the codes and debriefing (Merriam, 1998) to ensure the initial codes fit into more defined themes.

Perhaps expectedly, BTCs identified that in most cases their instructional decisions were influenced by language use. Longer periods of wait time taken by their student to start solving a problem or to answer a question prompted the BTCs to switch from Spanish to English which indicated a deficit perspective on the use of Spanish while problem-solving and privileging English. Additionally, BTCs were unaware of these deficit perspectives and consequential changes made in the moment of instruction, but upon reflection agreed that their decision-making was influenced by their perceptions that the use of Spanish was interfering with their students’ understanding of the problem. Though this group's experiences may not generalize to all BTCs, mathematics teacher educations that support BTCs in bilingual classrooms need to consider the role of deficit perspectives on using of Spanish as BTCs work with bilingual students. These video cases offered insight into how BTCs made instructional decisions and revealed how their perspectives on language influenced approaches to support student learning.

Author

• Gladys Krause, William and Mary