Translanguaging to Co-Design with Parents and Teachers Towards Transformational Change in Mathematics Learning

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 8:00 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Equity as a Process: Negotiating Tensions and Power Dynamics Through Discourse in Co-Design Meetings (Table 9)

Abstract

Purpose. Our study portrays a multilingual co-design space with caregivers, teachers, and researchers for children’s mathematical learning in a school serving 83% of students from Latinx communities. We explore how the flexible use of partners’ entire linguistic repertoires across languages allows them to challenge traditional power dynamics.

Theoretical framework. Family and community engagement (FCE) scholarship calls for critical perspectives that explicitly address power imbalances, especially when partnering with nondominant communities to disrupt traditional involvement that reinforces dominant institutional authority (Ishimaru, 2018). These collaborations are rooted in relational trust and authentic caring (Hong et al., 2022). Spaces where caregivers, teachers, and researchers can collaborate to design mathematical experiences that support children’s learning have the potential to sustain heritage and community practices and redistribute epistemic authority in mathematics (Booker & Goldman, 2016).

Translanguaging describes how individuals draw from their fluid and dynamic language practices, going beyond socially defined language boundaries to navigate complex communication environments (García, 2009; Wei, 2018). This view of language disrupts power relations by centering the linguistic border-making practices of linguistically minoritized people in opposition to colonial framings that are responsible for the suppression of minoritized language practices (Flores, 2023; Otheguy et al., 2015; Wei, 2018).

Methods and data sources. In the context of a Research-Practice Partnership, we formed a Family Math Leadership Team (six mothers, three teachers, one research assistant, and the first and second authors). We met monthly to share personal experiences with mathematics, solve problems, and plan a school-wide Math Night, among many other activities. Data included transcripts from team meetings and final focus groups.

The research team created content logs to identify interactional segments in the meetings transcripts. We conducted thematic analysis informed by FCE and translanguaging literature. Initial codes included: humor and language, communication comfort and breakdown. Finally, we followed the same process for coding the focus groups transcripts to triangulate our findings.

Results. We found the following emerging themes related to how individuals navigated a multilingual space with the goal of planning a math night: 1) participants engaged in intrapersonal and interpersonal interpreting to maximize comprehension across a linguistically diverse group, 2) participants actively created a comfortable communication space through translanguaging cariño/care (Salmerón et al., 2021) for each other’s diverse language and literacy practices, and 3) participants co-constructed discourse by transcending the facilitator/participant dichotomy across named languages. In the focus groups, caregivers were explicit about how their full linguistic repertoire allowed them to build familial intimacy and friendship with each other.

Significance. These themes suggest that allowing for a translanguaging space where socially constructed language borders are deconstructed in favor of the participants’ dynamic and adaptive language practices permits a group of linguistically diverse people to work towards a common goal. These expansive and flexible forms of linguistic participation enable people to bring their whole humanity beyond the particular role of mother, teacher, or researcher (Ishimaru & Bang, 2022), contributing to the disruption of the traditional power dynamics prompted by the epistemic authority that these roles entail.

Authors

• Patricia Fuentes Acevedo, University of California - Irvine

• Isabelle Acosta, University of California - Irvine

• Alejandro Granados Vargas, University of California - Irvine

• Christina Kimmerling, University of California - Irvine

• Rossella Santagata, University of California - Irvine