Learning to Leverage Obstacles, Resources, and Strategies in Math Classes With Multilingual Learners

Abstract

Mathematics teachers must be ready for diverse classrooms, where students who are multilingual learners (MLs) bring new dimensions to the teaching and learning. While MLs face obstacles to learning particular to their linguistic and cultural background, they also bring resources and strengths to bear that can be applied to teaching and learning. We have developed a Challenge-Based Instructional activity to help teachers leverage their experiences of teaching math to ML students, to better understand the obstacles and resources, and to select more effective pedagogical strategies particular to this context. This paper reports the benefits teachers gain in implementing this activity.