Examining Translanguaging Practices in Mathematical Modelling

We examined the role of translanguaging practices in secondary bilingual students’ engagement in different mathematical modelling phases. Teaching experiments methodology guided data collection from four hours of classroom interactions focused on a mathematical modelling task about a traffic jam. Analysis revealed that translanguaging practices helped connect students’ experiences to the task at crucial moments of the solving process, such as sense-making of the problem context, selecting appropriate units that were accessible to students, working with a new unit to make reasonable assumptions, and explaining the results in terms of variables to justify the models.