Codeswitching and Mathematics Learners

Mathematics education research has considered language issues for bilingual mathematics learners. This chapter introduces the reader to central issues regarding how bilingual learners use language during mathematical activity. To provide some historical context, it summarizes past work on language issues for bilingual mathematics learners. Studies that focused on the disadvantages bilingual learners faced in computation response time or with the mathematics register did not consider any possible advantages of bilingualism or the resources bilingual learners use. A central concern has been to shift away from deficit models of bilingual students to recognizing the resources students bring to the mathematics classroom from previous experiences. Codeswitching is also used to facilitate the connection of verbal languages with visual representations. Research focused on bilingual or multilingual mathematics learners addressed two common practices, switching languages during arithmetic computation and during mathematical discussions.