Abstract
This case explores how a monolingual teacher, embedded in a large urban school context, saw and understood her role in supporting emergent bilingual learners’ development of mathematics discourse. Particular attention is paid to the classroom arrangements and curricular and instructional choices this teacher made to facilitate this development. The teacher maintains distinct language ideologies and perceptions of Latina/o learners that tacitly influence her design and implementation of mathematics discourse communities. Assuming that this phenomenon is widespread, this case raises questions about what educational leadership might do to shift the paradigm toward school culture where all school personnel understand the power of specialized discourses, the need to assume a collective responsibility to explicitly support learners’ language development, and their inextricable connection to Latina/os’ subject-area affinities and identities.
Introduction
There is often a lack of instructional support, or leadership, to help teachers establish and implement a principled approach to creating teaching and learning arrangements that capitalize on bilingual learners’ strengths and minimize their struggles and marginalization (Anderson, 2009; Eacott, 2011). There is, therefore, a significant need for educators and educational leadership to intimately familiarize themselves with the complex, and often marginalizing, schooling experiences of bilingual Latina/o learners.
In light of the notion that most teachers feel ill-prepared to work efficaciously with bilingual learners, this case of Ms. Lenihan, a middle school mathematics teacher, provides an opportunity for school leaders to explore (a) how to best support the mathematics teaching practices and dispositions of monolingual teachers in relation to bilingual, Latina/o learners; (b) how the sociopolitical, organizational, and bureaucratic contexts within which teacher and school leader practices are reinforced, challenged, and/or developed; and (c) what the role of the school leader is while balancing external pressures that often influence decisions and compromise culturally relevant curriculum and instruction, especially in large, urban schools and districts.
Language Ideologies
How educators conceptualize the role and appropriate uses of language(s) in social interactions is represented in language ideologies. There is significant power inherent in language choices, and educators must account for their ideology-laden discourses that contribute to the social construction of youth, in general, but specifically to mathematics and particular learners’ abilities to do and be successful with mathematics (Gee, 2014). In particular, when discussing the mathematics teaching and learning of Latina/os, language ideologies become—or ought to become—a central theoretical and analytical construct. We use this term to signify “the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests” (Irvine & Gal, 2000, p. 5). In other words, individuals maintain ideas about the role and use of language(s), and these perspectives have significant social and political implications.
In mathematics, for example, Franke, Kazemi, and Battey (2007) contend that students ways of being and interacting in classrooms impact not only their mathematical thinking but also their own sense of their ability to do and persist with mathematics, the way they are viewed as competent in mathematics, and their ability to perform successfully in school. (p. 226)
From this perspective, language, and teachers’ consciousness of language, is more central to mathematics learning outcomes than previously thought. Accordingly, attention should be paid to how language interacts with other dynamics in the discourses present in a given mathematics community. Like Gee (2014), we refer to this environment, its sociocultural and political context, and the ideologies and inherent power structures as a mathematics discourse community (MDC).
Case Narrative
The School
Southwest Elementary School is located on the southwest side of a large, Midwestern city and enrolls about 1,200 students. About 85% of the students are Latina/o, 7.8% White (majority of Middle-eastern decent), 6.2% Black, and 1% multiracial. Approximately 91% of the students are eligible for the free or reduced-price lunch program. School officials describe the community as “blue-collar workers” and “low income.” Importantly, upward of 30% of students are enrolled in bilingual or English as a Second Language (ESL) programs, though researchers familiar with the school estimate that at least 85% of students come from homes where a language other than English is spoken, and the majority of these students reside in Spanish-speaking households. Also noteworthy, roughly half the middle-grade teachers are teachers of color, but none of the teachers identify as bilingual; there is one part-time bilingual assistant teacher who pulls out students to support general language development.
Southwest is a unique school because it operates two buildings a block apart from one another. Grades K-6 are in the main building, and Grades 7 and 8 are in the middle school, often called the branch, which is a small building that lacks many amenities normally found in schools. For example, there is no cafeteria, specialty rooms (i.e., art, computers, music), or library. Both buildings are severely overcrowded, and the principal has been working to get modular classrooms put on the grounds for the upcoming school year. In the main building, two classes shared space in the library, divided by portable pinboards, to conduct class.
Both the principal and assistant principal (AP) are White, monolingual females. The principal resides exclusively at the main building, and the AP leads the middle school branch. The AP primarily dedicated her attention to logistical, or organizational, matters and the orderliness of the students, especially compliance to the dress code. On many occasions, the AP asked boys to tuck in their shirts, and commented to girls that their hoop earrings were larger than the size of a quarter. One pertinent organizational decision by the AP was, in response to a state audit, to group all of the English learners (ELs) in one cohort of students who moved through their classes together each day. This decision was made to be in compliance with state code that ensured ELs would receive necessary academic supports.
The services provided to middle-grade students, however, were minimal and isolated. For example, students never received support during mathematics class. Rather, the teachers characterized language support for emergent bilingual children as pullout, where the learners would be taken to the cafeteria to read books in Spanish, presumably to develop native language literacy skills. While it is beyond the purpose of this case to debate the merits of such services, it is important to acknowledge that the middle-grade mathematics teachers interacted very little with the language support staff and, therefore, were largely left to locate their own resources and determine an appropriate course of action to support these learners. Recall that nearly 85% of students in their classes were nonnative English speakers at various points in their developmental bilingualism, and could have benefited from intentional instructional approaches related to language use and development in mathematics.
Meet the Teacher—Ms. Lenihan
Ms. Lenihan (pseudonym) teaches mathematics to all of the seventh-grade students (five different cohorts) in 40-min class periods. While not an ESL or language arts teacher, she also assumes responsibility for teaching either language arts (essentially, vocabulary development) or writing to her homeroom class. Ms. Lenihan is in her third year at Southwest and in her fourth year of teaching overall. She is a younger, White teacher who completed her teacher preparation at a well-known, local private university. She is monolingual (English speaking), and thus does not feel comfortable speaking Spanish.
Ms. Lenihan often remarks about the importance of being able to communicate mathematically. Helping students to “use mathematics language” is her personal pedagogical goal to work on during the school year with respect to teaching mathematics to Latina/os. One effort she has made toward this goal is to help develop her students’ ability to write proficiently about mathematics problem-solving activities. Her motivation for this goal is largely rooted in the state’s assessment program, which requires students to respond to multiple “extended response” items; thus, she has developed a six-step extended response protocol—based on the criteria and formula used to score the written responses—that prescribes to students how they should write (i.e., restate the question, state your answer, describe each step you took to reach that answer, conclude by restating that you have fully answered the question). Furthermore, she regularly draws on past test questions to help her students improve their mathematics writing skills. As a result, writing becomes a mechanical task to prove one’s mathematical knowledge rather than a tool to assist in the mathematical meaning-making and language development processes.
Ms. Lenihan recognizes that what Latina/o students receive by way of mathematics education is largely ineffective in the United States. She is well-intentioned, ambitious, and quick to point out “traditional” mathematics teaching approaches taking place in her school. She attempts to create a mathematics learning environment that engages Latina/o students through projects and activities that reflect the context of their lives. This effort, however, is frequently compromised by a perceived need to directly prepare students for the standardized assessment with structures such as writing via a protocol and regular practice with test item questions. In addition, Ms. Lenihan strives to establish a mathematics classroom in which students have opportunities to talk. For example, students, situated in small clusters, are often asked to discuss collaboratively an impromptu question as a means to develop an understanding of mathematical idea. These opportunities, however, are not carefully implemented and often lead to a community of frustrated learners in which only a relatively small number of students regularly and meaningfully participate discursively. In other words, steadfast participation patterns—in which only an outspoken few are consistently engaged—are not disrupted.
With Latina/o students in mind, this MDC represents only a small departure from the teacher-dominated mathematics classrooms that have, historically, been prevalent across the country—especially among schools enrolling high numbers of poor children and children of color—and served well only a minority of the population at large. The pedagogical moves meant to be transformative, such as providing students with more opportunities to talk mathematically, do not automatically have the effect we believe Ms. Lenihan hoped.
Snapshots From the Classroom
Ms. Lenihan had difficulty envisioning and enacting inclusive learning environments for emerging bilingual students. This was especially apparent with Spanish-dominant students (in this case, middle-grade students typically with less than 2 years of schooling in the United States), with whom the teacher tended to avoid mathematical interactions. These practices are reflective of language ideologies—specifically ones that questioned students’ ability to understand English and her own ability to communicate effectively—and, as a result, many students were left without adequate access to the central mathematical ideas presented in the lessons.
Per standard procedure in this district, students’ language is formally assessed when, upon enrollment, the “Home Language Survey” indicates that any language other than English is spoken at home. Although the assessment produces a score on various language skills (i.e., speaking, listening, writing, reading), this process typically results in the students being cast into broad categories: limited-to-no English, conversant in English, or English proficient. Ms. Lenihan tended not to get much more information than one of these concise phrases that sum up a complex language system.
In the cases where students entered the school with “limited-to-no English,” Ms. Lenihan was apprehensive to interact directly with these students. There appears to be an element of discomfort when she is in the presence of students who are functioning primarily in Spanish, perhaps because of the perception of a linguistic barrier; that is, Ms. Lenihan seems to have difficulty envisioning a means of communicating with the child or building up the courage to enter into a potentially awkward situation where reaching a shared understanding of a message is challenging. While she comfortably works and communicates with students exhibiting a solid command of (conversational) English, interactions with newcomers or other emerging bilingual students is markedly different and might best be described as “non-interactions”—that is, there is clearly an absence of meaningful interactions that might help the students move from mimicry of academic behaviors (Chval, 2009) to actually accessing the mathematical activities and engaging in the collaborative problem-solving sessions. To illustrate this point, consider the following scenario from Ms. Lenihan’s class: Ms. Lenihan wants her students to learn mathematics through projects based on issues that are important to teenagers. She has developed an anti-smoking unit in which the students will develop proficiency in statistics. The students are to create an interview protocol; collect, aggregate, and analyze data; and analyze historical trends around smoking. In one lesson from this project, the students are analyzing a coordinate plane graph of cigarette production in the U.S. On the overhead, Ms. Lenihan leads the students through the directions on the worksheet, on which they are given eight data points (year, number of cigarettes) in 10-year intervals (from 1925 to 1995). The students were to plot the points on the graph provided. In an effort to get the students to determine and communicate how they might find data points that are in between the given intervals on the x-axis and y-axis of the graph, Ms. Lenihan orally asks them to discuss in their groups the following question: L: Why is it important to know what points lie between our data points? One group of three bilingual, Latino boys (Omar, Ramon, and Salvador) slowly begins to mull over the problem. There is a fourth boy in the group, Niko, but he does not speak, nor do the other group members acknowledge his presence. Niko transferred to Southwest Elementary School from Mexico about 3 weeks prior to this lesson. Between the time Ms. Lenihan asks the students to discuss this question and when she arrives to interact with this group (about 8 min), not much is discussed by the group members; only a few utterances are mumbled by Ramon and Omar trying to ascertain what Ms. Lenihan’s question is asking them to consider. Upon joining the group, she asked the boys what it was that they were supposed to determine. As she discussed this with the students, she makes consistent eye contact with Omar, Ramon, and Salvador, but only briefly glanced at Niko, who was looking downward. In this brief glance at Niko, her body language says, “I know you are there. I recognize that you are not engaging in this activity or this conversation, but there is nothing I can do to communicate with you.” With Ms. Lenihan using Omar’s desk and paper as the focal point, Salvador and Raul lean in from across the desk. Niko remains seated to the left of Omar, staring straight ahead out the window. For 4 min, Ms. Lenihan rattles off questions without noticeably adjusting her language to increase the probability that Niko garner clues as to what they are discussing, nor inviting him to reposition himself to view the paper. However, Ramon and Omar respond quickly to the questions. When they respond incorrectly, Ms. Lenihan steers them toward the specific answer she wants them to reach. During this time, Niko sits silently, staring out the window first, then down at his worksheet, holding his forehead with both hands. Ms. Lenihan leaves abruptly, and the three boys congratulate each other with a “high five.” Niko looks up once Ms. Lenihan has left.
While this may be one of the most overt manifestations of Ms. Lenihan neglecting Niko as a learner, it was not an isolated incident; rather, it was a pattern that has been established for 3 weeks and continued for several weeks before it is addressed (as explained in the section below). Although Niko has been attending Ms. Lenihan’s class for several weeks at this point, she has yet to interact with him personally or mathematically. Therefore, this was not anomalous behavior from Ms. Lenihan. Similarly, this was not simply an “off” day for Niko. To the contrary, his withdrawn behavior appears to be the result of weeks of noninteractions with both Ms. Lenihan and his classmates.
Upon Niko’s arrival at Southwest Elementary School from Mexico, Ms. Lenihan asked a Spanish-speaking colleague to determine Niko’s mathematical background, which was relatively strong, and the colleague conveyed to her the results of this informal assessment. Her reluctance to speak directly to Niko, both in this example and in the preceding weeks, suggests a level of discomfort or intimidation as to how the interaction might unfold. She depended on Niko’s peers to engage him, although this ultimately proved to be an ineffective strategy to support Niko. Now, after avoiding interaction for weeks, the tension between the two has grown. Niko, knowing that Ms. Lenihan has not spoken with him, perhaps is wondering what sense to make of these “non-interactions.” Without support as to how he is to engage in the mathematical activities, his default mechanism is to politely withdraw himself from the interaction while she is present. When Ms. Lenihan is away, Niko tries to participate but is unsuccessful in the established MDC, in large part due to Ms. Lenihan’s inability to provide a model for how the group members might interact with him.
The same type of what we call “non-interactions,” where Ms. Lenihan does not engage with Niko, occurred several times. However, it is not as though Ms. Lenihan is an aloof teacher who prefers that Niko not be in her class. To the contrary, Ms. Lenihan is a compassionate and committed teacher. Still, Ms. Lenihan accepts the fact that Niko is not engaging or participating, and as a result she underestimates the importance of participation in the mathematics learning process. She (naively) assumes that Niko is making meaning around these mathematical ideas, despite no verbal indication or gesture that he is cognitively engaging with the activity.
She also appears uneasy interacting with a student when there is linguistic incongruence (i.e., monolingual individuals speaking two distinct languages without overlap) and the potential to struggle to communicate. This discomfort is noticeable and has the effect of mounting over time; it also appears to affect the interpersonal relationships between Niko and his classmates. While this instance of intercultural communication appears to be the source of anxiety, it is clear that no mathematical progress will be made until Ms. Lenihan shows a willingness to engage Niko—however unpredictable or awkward it might be—and see what can be gained from intentional interaction. In other words, Ms. Lenihan can change the dynamics within this group—and the broader MDC in the classroom—by initiating and modeling more collaborative and inclusive ways of solving problems.
Troubleshooting mathematical exclusion
Eventually, Ms. Lenihan acknowledges and tries to reconcile Niko’s exclusion. The following example illustrates her efforts to incorporate Niko into the mathematics activities: About 1 month after the previous episode, the class is still working on the anti-smoking unit. At this point, each student has interviewed a “smoker,” and Ms. Lenihan (L) is leading a discussion about the concept of 100% (in terms of aggregated data and the total number of respondents responding to an item the same way). After a mini-lesson, she asks the students to respond to “record all the ways to represent 1” in their groups on their white boards. When she visits Niko’s group, she realizes that he is not interacting with his group members, Ramon (R) and Juan (J). The following transcript illustrates her approach to addressing the situation: L: Ok, what do you guys have? (walking to the group of boys from an adjacent group) J: We put 150, as in like the smokers that smoke every day. R: Yeah. And, it goes like one whole. L: Is there anyway Niko could be included by any chance? Could you guys try? J: Yeah. L: Ok. And, could you put some words, like, you know, “150 out of 150 means all the students . . .,” like, you know. R: Smokers. L: (walking away to another group, addressing the entire class) You’re gonna need some words, but you shouldn’t need, like, fifty. You’re gonna need some . . . to explain.
This entire episode was 44 s long. Ms. Lenihan’s acknowledgment and attempt to address Niko’s lack of involvement was 6 s. Importantly—yet, not unusual—Niko does not speak. Throughout this episode, he is carefully arranging papers in his folder and neatly placing the folder in his desk. Niko is the only student doing this, as it is not the time to be transitioning from one activity to the next. Again, without Ms. Lenihan modeling intentional interaction and mathematical communication with Niko, Niko is left, himself, to figure out what mathematical engagement is appropriate in this established MDC.
This is an example of Ms. Lenihan’s recognition that her MDC—the mathematical learning arrangements and what they come to mean for individual students—is resulting in the exclusion of a student; yet, she does not know how to rectify the situation. The fact that she chose to intervene in this situation exposes an awareness of what inequitable learning arrangements might look like—what could be the result of her teacher preparation and development. However, she is either not equipped with the practical knowledge to innovate a way to mediate Niko’s mathematics learning, or she does not deem it imminent enough to see through that Niko is included. Ideally, Ms. Lenihan would have posed a question such as “Ramon, have you asked Niko how he would represent 100%?” A question of this nature would have signaled to the group members that everyone should be included. Alternatively, Ms. Lenihan might have followed up her request for Niko to be included by modeling how the group members might take turns sharing their thinking and asking each other questions—sophisticated, sociomathematical norms that encourage responsibility and accountability for each other’s mathematics learning, as well as providing equitable opportunities to develop mathematical discourse (McClain & Cobb, 2001). Instead, she was apparently satisfied with Juan’s agreement to include Niko and confident that their inclusion strategy would translate to meaningful learning for him. Hence, Ms. Lenihan decided to act on other priorities, as indicated by her quick departure from the group, simultaneously encouraging the other small groups to “use words” in their representations on the whiteboards.
After she left the group, Ramon and Juan continued to work with each other. After both Ramon and Juan recorded a representation of one (1), they passed the whiteboard to Niko and requested that he contribute another possibility. There were minimal words exchanged in making this request. It was apparent that this was an unchartered interactional space for the boys. In Spanish, Ms. Lenihan’s colleague asked Niko to write a representation of one (1), which he did with ease. In fact, he cleverly labeled the representation, indexing a level of familiarity of the context. Interestingly, the conversation continued in Spanish—including Juan and Ramon—demonstrating that, with support, this particular group can make a fluid transition into conducting their work in Spanish and sustain the dialogue in Spanish, marking Spanish as a legitimate learning resource.
For Ms. Lenihan, this is undoubtedly an attempt at inclusion, but it does not have the effect of engaging Niko in linguistic and cognitively demanding mathematical problem solving or providing him with opportunities to communicate with peers. Presumably at a loss for another way forward pedagogically as a result of particular language ideologies (i.e., perceived inability to communicate with emergent bilingual students), Ms. Lenihan defaulted to an approach that passed along the responsibility of mathematical facilitation onto Niko’s group members. She strategically placed Niko with two nice, bilingual boys hoping that they would communicate with him in Spanish. However, this did not unfold as planned for at least two reasons: First, the boys did not automatically take up Spanish because they are not accustomed to talking mathematically—or in any academic discipline for that matter—in Spanish; that practice was abandoned in the early primary grades.
In addition, Ramon’s efforts to “include Niko” consisted of directly translating the written activity prompt displayed on the overhead, a painful process to witness. While Ramon is completely bilingual, he clearly does not have experience translating; the ability to translate well is not an automatic process that comes with being bilingual. As shown, Ms. Lenihan’s colleague was able to intervene and translate in a much more efficient and effective way. He attributed his success less to his ability to speak Spanish well and more to past mathematical experiences that have helped him develop the practice of thinking and sharing his thinking bilingually. Unfortunately, Spanish-speaking students seldom have similar bilingual mathematical experiences.
Ms. Lenihan—like many teachers—makes particular assumptions about her students’ abilities to fill in for her role as teacher facilitator; how these assumptions play out in microinteractions is less than desirable. Ms. Lenihan does not provide a model to help established bilingual students (i.e., students proficient in Spanish and English across social and academic contexts) understand how they might include and work cohesively with Spanish-dominant students. The boys are not trained to facilitate a student’s mathematics learning or to manage a group inclusively. Needless to say, these are complex tasks, and Ms. Lenihan overestimated their ability to do so.
It is not uncommon for monolingual teachers to not know how to best interact with and ensure the learning of emerging bilingual students (Bartolome, 2003). In this example, however, the interaction between Ms. Lenihan and Niko might, again, be called a noninteraction. The linguistic incongruence between teacher and student is clearly exposed. While, understandably, Ms. Lenihan might be at a loss for a way to move forward, her critical and improvised instructional decision proved to be problematic. Again, the uncomfortable nature of the situation might have been the reason she did not stay to see how the boys attempted to include Niko, precluding her from recognizing the inherent flaws in this approach and, perhaps, prompting her to try a new approach.
Teaching Notes
In reflecting on and learning from this case, it is essential to first consider that the history of public schooling in the United States in regard to students of color and nonnative English speakers is saturated with policies and practices aimed at assimilation and acculturation efforts to White, middle-class norms rather than honoring the strengths and languages students bring with them to school (Tyack, 1974; Urrieta, 2014). M. P. López and López (2010), for example, trace out a history of “English only” movements and language “reform” initiatives aimed to “fix or rectify ‘language deficiencies’ of children as opposed to fixing deficient school structures, curricula, instructional practices, and policies that enable non-English language speakers to flourish in an English-dominant school setting” (p. 92). To be clear, this represents a major shift, and if this shift is to gain traction, it requires that educators recognize their position in relation to bilingual Latina/o learners and the deficit perspectives and discourses with which they engage. These deficit perspectives are represented at all levels of schooling (through federal, state, district, and building-level policies and practices) and permeate the MDCs teachers create.
Acknowledging that most teachers feel ill-prepared to work efficaciously with bilingual learners, how can school leaders support personnel to confront myths and misconceptions about bilingual learners, and understand the collective responsibility of educating bilingual learners? In the case of Ms. Lenihan, she provides a mere 6 s of interaction with Niko, a child new to the country who has learned how to make himself invisible when she comes around. To note, during this time Ms. Lenihan was enrolled in a master’s degree program through which she would earn a Bilingual/English as a Second Language endorsement. Furthermore, this opportunity to continue her learning as a monolingual teacher working with bilingual children was her own endeavor as she was concerned with the lack of professional development offered through her school. Thus, teachers—especially secondary mathematics teachers—need to understand the importance of direct interaction with bilingual students as a requisite pedagogical move that precedes any meaningful relationship or mediated mathematics learning (Razfar, Licón Khisty, & Chval, 2011), a complex endeavor even for someone specifically working toward these efforts.
Due to this history of inequities at various levels of schooling, then, G. R. López, Harvey, and Chesnut (2013) describe how it is essential for school leaders to “continually emphasize the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity as central to improving school culture, climate, and the socioeducational experience of students and families [original emphasis]” (p. 269). Relatedly, Hesbol (2013) distinguishes between first- and second-order changes in efforts to reculture schools as inclusive communities of practice. She describes how the history of education reform is littered with first-order changes (e.g., changes in curriculum, changes in schedules, and “adaptations of the original process without disturbing the equilibrium”), and how these types of changes do not address existing practices and procedures of an organization (p. 606). Second-order changes, on the contrary, “purposefully contest the existing collective mental models, as well as core processes, of an organization” (p. 606). It is these second-order changes that are needed for the total transformation and reconceptualization of organization to take place. Furthermore, Hesbol notes that adaptations which are required in order to accomplish institutionalized change involve not simply the reorganization of the framework and the system but demand a dramatic change in the way that individuals think and interact within the system, particularly those of the leaders. (p. 606)
With this sociopolitical and historical context of education and these ideas of first- and second-order changes in mind, then, we must consider what we can learn from the case of Ms. Lenihan. To analyze this case, we have organized its larger themes into three main provocations: leadership in the context of educational reform, supporting instructional change for bilingual students, and considerations of access and power in mathematics teaching and learning. These provocations—and the respective discussion questions and suggested readings—should not be treated as isolated or unrelated but are merely provided as a guide for discussion and action.
Provocation 1: Leadership in the Context of Educational Reform
How can school leaders (i.e., teacher-leaders, building-level administration) support (mathematics) teachers to become sensitive to discourses and practices rooted in deficit notions and confront their own complicity?
As a school leader what goals, policies, and practices do you currently have in place regarding support initiatives for bilingual learners and how integrated are these with the current school culture? Do all educators take up these aims, or are they predominantly contained to designated staff members responsible for supporting ELs?
Given the sociopolitical and historical context of education and the era of testing and accountability, what tensions exist in providing optimal academic services for (emergent) bilingual learners? What are efficient and effective ways to navigate tensions at the school, district, and state levels to successfully educate bilingual learners and ensure that this student population is not overlooked?
Suggested reading
Murakami, E. T., Valle, F., & Mendez-Morse, S. (2013). Latina/o Learners and Academic Success: Sí Se Puede! In L. C. Tillman, & J.J. Scheurich (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational leadership for equity and diversity (pp. 134-175). New York, NY: Routledge.
Provocation 2: Supporting Instructional Change for Bilingual Students
How can school leadership, as defined in your respective school space (i.e., building administrators, instructional coaches, department heads, etc.), create a climate and protocol for teachers to examine current practices, and innovate and establish new approaches and practices, with bilingual Latina/os?
How might teacher evaluations/instructional conversations be structured to focus on issues of discourse, accommodations, and promoting structural and technical changes in teaching and academic engagement? How might these same instructional conversations be conducted to bring to the surface unconsciously held mental models that influence teacher actions?
In what ways might educational leaders facilitate the development of learning communities among mathematics teachers (i.e., critical collaborators) to cultivate and support productive mathematical discourse communities in classrooms?
Suggested reading
López, G. R., Harvey, L., & Chesnut, C. (2013). Latino English language learners in a changing demographic landscape: Critical issues for school leaders to consider implementing best practices. In L. C. Tillman, & J.J. Scheurich (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational leadership for equity and diversity (pp. 257-286). New York, NY: Routledge.
Provocation 3: Considerations of Access and Power in Mathematics Teaching and Learning
Considering that mathematics often serves as gatekeeper to educational success (i.e., student, teacher, and school “accountability” metrics that rely heavily on testing), how might you resist and reimagine the purpose and goal of mathematics to better support your teachers, and better serve bilingual learners and ultimately the school community?
What resistance to change might educational leaders anticipate from teachers who have not typically considered their job description as including issues related to language support for bilingual learners? How might educational leaders combat this resistance?
How might educational leaders support the use of and legitimize the academic use of languages other than English in an English-dominant school? What opportunities might this type of school environment afford bilingual learners, particularly as it relates to mathematics?
Suggested reading
Hesbol, K. A. (2013). Preparing leaders to reculture schools as inclusive communities of practice. In L. C. Tillman, & J.J. Scheurich (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational leadership for equity and diversity (pp. 603-624). New York, NY: Routledge.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This manuscript is based in part upon work supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0424983 to the Center for the Mathematics Education of Latinos/as (CEMELA). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.