From language as a resource to sources of meaning in multilingual mathematics classrooms

For more than twenty years, research on the learning and teaching of mathematics in multilingual classrooms has deployed the notion of language as a resource. I review and critique the development and application of this notion, focusing particularly on the work of Jill Adler, Mamokgethi Phakeng (formerly Setati), Nuria Planas and Judit Moschkovich. Thinking of language as a resource has been important in countering deficit perspectives on language diversity in mathematics classrooms, but also has some limitations, including its materialization of language and a tendency to separate different aspects of language use. I propose a theoretical framework, based on “sources of meaning”, to address these limitations, drawing on Bakhtinian theory and the contemporary sociolinguistics of multilingualism. This framework includes four principles: language is agentive; meaning is relational; language is diverse; and language is stratified and stratifying. It also uses the sociolinguistic idea of repertoires to develop an integrated understanding of students' meaning making in mathematics. I illustrate these ideas with interpretation of a short extract of a transcript of two students from a multilingual mathematics classroom working on worksheet tasks.