Rethinking the Teaching Mathematics for Emergent Bilinguals by Ji Yeong I & Hyewon Chang & Ji-Won Son

Author:Ji Yeong I & Hyewon Chang & Ji-Won Son
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811509667
Publisher: Springer Singapore

6.4 Power and Participation

The third domain concerns how teachers set up the power dynamics in mathematics classes and how the power structure influences KLLs’ participation in mathematical discussions. A teacher’s positive feedback may encourage students to establish positive identity and strong self-esteem, and eventually to lead to them actively participating in classroom discussions (Howie 1999). This is particularly important in the case of emergent bilinguals because they are typically positioned inequitably in small group or whole-class discussions by others or themselves (Pinnow and Chval 2014). In this sense, Yoon (2008) argued that the levels of students’ participation differ depending on the teacher’s pedagogical approach to and interactions with emergent bilinguals, which is based on their positioning as a teacher. Wagner and Herbel-Eisenmann (2014) also argued that teacher discourse is an important factor that determines positioning and power structure within a classroom. They categorized teacher discourse patterns in mathematics classrooms according to the use of various types of teacher authority: personal authority, discourse as authority, discursive inevitability, and personal latitude. Among these four categories, teachers who used the last one, personal latitude, tend to encourage students to participate in a decision-making process. Thus, this authority pattern leads a student-centered approach by allowing students to have authority along with the teacher. In this sense, positioning is strongly influential when teaching minority groups, such as KLLs, because inequitable positioning may result in less learning opportunities for emergent bilinguals (Pinnow and Chval 2014; Yoon 2008). In this vein, when a teacher positions KLLs as successful contributors of the learning community the participation of KLLs in mathematical discussions is expected to increase.

This domain includes eight statements as displayed in Table 6.3. While we perceive most statements to be aligned with the recommendations from mathematics educators, statement 3 is designed to be negative. Statements 6 and 7 are written with a slight difference in mind: one is intended for all students and the other is asking about KLLs in particular. Overall, the teachers’ responses showed a similar pattern that we expected. Most responses strongly shifted toward agreement, and there was zero percent in strong disagreement, except in the case of statements 2 and 3.Table 6.3Responses to the eight statements in the third domain, power, and participation

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.