Challenges and Opportunities from Translingual Research on Multilingual Mathematics Classrooms

Abstract

This chapter provides a commentary on multilingual mathematics classroom research over the last two decades in order to look toward the next decades with a focus on issues of policy and practice. I select some of the theoretical nuances and concerns that have shaped the domain with respect to the critical relationships between: (1) monolingually oriented educational policies and progress in multilingual mathematics classroom research; and between (2) this progress and its implications for mathematics teacher education policies and pedagogies. To this end, I undertake a threefold interpretation of progress in the research domain. I argue that three meta-theoretical concerns have challenged, not without frictions and back-and-forth fluctuations, monolingually oriented policies, practices, and theories. I start with domain research grounded on language as tool of communication and on codeswitching as encoder of accurate meaning in multilingual mathematics teaching and learning. I follow with research that interrogates the ideal of meaning accuracy, and then end with the most recent line of translingual domain research with implications for the broader field and the work of teacher educators and researchers.