“Negativo por negativo me va dar un… POSITIvo”: Translanguaging as a Vehicle for Appropriation of Mathematical Meanings

Abstract

This chapter captures Ofelia García’s (Bilingual education in the 21st century: a global perspective. Wiley-Blackwell Pub, Malden/Oxford, 2009) concept of translanguaging and examines its presence in the teaching and learning processes of a seventh-grade mathematics classroom. Recently, some scholars, who explore language as a tool for learning, have taken the concept of translanguaging as a positive pedagogical tool in bilingual and bicultural classrooms. By looking at discourse as it naturally occurs in the classroom, this paper shows how translanguaging practices are being employed as a vehicle for appropriation of mathematical meanings. Drawing from sociocultural theories of learning and development (Vygotsky LS, Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1978), the community of practice approach (Lave J, Wenger E, Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press, New York, 1991), and Discourse and discourse analysis (Gee JP, Social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourses. Routledge, New York, 2008, Gee JP, An introduction to discourse analysis: theory and method. Routledge, New York, 2011b), this chapter portrays how a bilingual teacher and his bilingual Latina/o students engage in interactional activities in which they make use of translanguaging Discourses to co-construct mathematical understandings. Findings are grouped into two intertwined main categories: (1) translanguaging as a pedagogical tool that supports appropriation of mathematical meanings, and (2) translanguaging as a linguistic practice that allows fluidity and movement of the teaching and learning process.

Appendix: Transcription Conventions

L:	Mr. Lozano
[transcribe]	overlapping talk
(4)	timed silence in seconds
(.)	micro pause
(...)	longer pause, not timed
Tra:::nscribe	longer stretched sound
Transcribe	emphasis
EQUATION	louder talk
xxx	unintelligible talk
(contest)	transcriber’s best guess of talk
((student))	transcriber’s note about nonverbal activities, or classroom activities observed in class as logged on fieldnotes, or transcriber’s comment))
Spanish	talk in Spanish
{English}	English translation from Spanish
[sic]	a word is written as it is pronounced
----	talk omitted
Córta[lo]	Added by transcriber