Integrating Children’s Experiences and Mathematical Learning: Using Addition to Explore Dynamic Family Structures

• In Event: Innovations and Advances in Mathematics Instruction

Abstract

Research Problem and Objectives
Children’s perspectives are often overlooked in mathematics education (as argued by Esmonde & Langer-Osuna, 2013). Leveraging children’s experiences can be promising and generative to better support their mathematics learning (Author, Year). The purpose of this study is to illustrate how teacher-researcher partnerships can support teachers in welcoming historically marginalized children’s whole selves into mathematics lessons.

Theoretical Framework
Tenets from critical mathematics education (Skovsmose & Borba, 2004) guided a collaboration between six elementary teachers and a researcher. We came together as co-researchers, thus challenging epistemological hierarchies and hegemonical narratives. Rather than pursuing generic mathematical lessons that pretend to be universal, we welcomed bilingual Latinx children’s whole selves, including their complex family situations, into their mathematics learning process. Each teacher and the researcher co-planned and implement lessons informed by children’s perspectives.

Methods
This participatory research took place in two public schools in the southern United States. The teachers and the researcher are bilingual Latinx immigrants. There were between 15 and 20 children in each classroom, most of whom were Latinx, spoke Spanish at home, and received free or reduced-priced meals. The researcher visited each classroom weekly and debriefed lessons with the teachers, attending to whether children’s experiences were dismissed or integrated into mathematics lessons.

Data sources included video recording and verbatim transcript of one lesson per week during the fall of 2024. Data analysis involved Powell et al.'s (2003) framework for analyzing mathematics video-recorded lessons. The researcher and a research assistant engaged in repeated attentive viewing, segmenting lessons and determining which segments provided evidence of the integration of children’s experiences and mathematics. We identified the lesson with the highest number of relevant segments for each classroom. Each teacher and the researcher came together to conduct repeated attentive viewing, interpreting instances of children attempting to make connections to their experience, and whether and how these attempts were supported or inhibited.

Findings
This poster will focus on one lesson where fourth graders figured out how much their family should drink. The children received a table showing water needs in milliliters (four-digit numbers), according to age. Children talked about their histories of migration in relation to who to include as part of their family, discussing family separation, such as relatives who lived abroad, as well as family reconfiguration, such as extended families forming where children lived now. Next, children used multiple addition strategies flexibly, mainly place value strategies and the traditional algorithm. Finally, the teacher elicited the minimum and the maximum totals. These values surprised children, and children discussed the family composition of those with the minimum and maximum totals.

Scholarly Significance
This study contributes new knowledge about elevating the voices of children from historically marginalized communities. Following tenets from critical mathematics education (Frankenstein, 1983), our study adds to this previous research by centering children’s experiences as a catalyst to rehumanize their mathematics learning process.

Author

• José Martínez Hinestroza, University of Texas - San Antonio