30 Grade-Eight Students : Discourse switch and bilingual students solving text problems in mathematics

Abstract

In this paper, I investigate how discourse switch is influenced by agency as students orally solve a statistical problem. The linguistic and cultural backgrounds of bilingual students are often viewed as deficiencies that contribute to low performance in school. One example of a deficit explanation, in Sweden, is a student’s "lack of Swedishness". I use the notion of agency to avoid deficiency explanations of bilingual students’ performance in school mathematics. In this problem solving episode, Swedish serves as the main language of instruction. Discourse switches from a dominant discourse of "Swedish only" to a discourse of recognising bilingualism, as the teacher translates into Arabic and explains in Arabic