Is Formal Language Proficiency in the Home Language Required to Profit from a Bilingual Teaching Intervention in Mathematics? A Mixed Methods Study on Fostering Multilingual Students’ Conceptual Understanding

Abstract

To what degree can multilingual students profit from bilingual tea ching approaches, even when they lack experience in the academic or technical register in their home languages? This study explores this research question in a mixed methods design for a German/Turkish bilingual intervention aimed at The sample consisted of German/Turkish bilingual students (n = 128) in Grade 7 in German schools without prior formal mathematics education in Turkish. In a randomized control trial, the bilingual intervention was compared to the corresponding monolingual intervention and a control group. A repeated ana lysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that students in both interventions had significantly higher learning gains than in the control group, and in fact profited equally from both interventions, although some time and effort was required for overcoming initial barriers in the home language and especially in the academic register. A qualitative analysis of the videotaped bilingual learning processes revealed insights into specific obstacles and chances of connecting both languages in order to foster conceptual understanding. The students with some formal language proficiency in Turkish seemed to profit even more from the bilingual intervention, but a rigid technical register was not necessary.

Values and Valuing in Mathematics Education

“…Although there are some studies in German schools that examine the skills of German/Turkish bilingual students regarding their language use in doing mathematics (Schüler-Meyer et al 2017), not many specifically investigate these students' values towards mathematics and mathematics education.…”

Volume 13 Issue 7b Complete Issue

“… Schüler- Meyer's (2017) research is embedded in a project that builds upon multilingual students' resources (Barwell, 2009), here in their home language Turkish. He investigates the functioning of a bilingual German-Turkish intervention for fostering the students' conceptual understanding of fractions.…”

“… Language learning for increasing mathematics achievement cannot be separated from mathematics learning (Hagena et al, 2017), instead, language and content integrated approaches are necessary (Short, 2017;Prediger & Zindel, 2017;Schüler-Meyer, 2017;Rezat & Rezat, 2017). …”

“… Instructional approaches should take into considerations multilingual language resources, if existent, and how they are enacted in the classroom (Moschkovich, 2017;Schüler-Meyer, 2017).…”

“…o Quantitative methods are applied by Hagena et al (2017) and Short (2017) for providing quantitative evidence for the (non-)effectiveness of approaches, o The others investigate the initiated teaching learning processes qualitatively (Schüler-Meyer, 2017;Prediger & Zindel, 2017;Lange & Meaney, 2017), showing the complexities  of the connection between language and mathematics (Prediger & Zindel, 2017),  of student learning in interaction (Schüler-Meyer, 2017)  and of teacher learning (Lange & Meaney, 2017).…”