This Miller Mini-Grant Project had two major outcomes:
Objective 1
Create reading materials to increase teacher knowledge of how to teach Emergent Bilinguals, which would be used as reading assignments in the online course, EDUC 502/593G.
Outcome
We wrote the online textbook, entitled “Teaching Math for Emergent Bilinguals: Building on Culture, Language, and Identity,” from 2019 fall to 2020 spring and published it in 2020 through ISU Digital Press. The spring 2021 course used this textbook for free as the primary reading assignment. With the new online textbook, students had an opportunity to learn cutting-edge research findings of teaching Emergent Bilinguals in and outside of mathematics education fields. For example, we included translanguaging pedagogy in this new book, something that is not yet fully introduced in the mathematics education field. Using the online textbook throughout the course, the materials of each module are more streamlined than using different resources in each module. Accordingly, we found students’ assignments had a higher quality with richer reflection. Many students shared their transformed perspectives towards Emergent Bilinguals by reading the textbook within their discussions and assignments.
Objective 2
Provide essential resources for mathematics teachers and teacher educators in and beyond EDUC 502/593G and Iowa State University.
Outcome
Since the online textbook is free to download from the ISU Digital Press, any school district or other teacher educators can use the resource for their teacher education courses or professional development sessions. For example, one teacher educator from Canada requested access to the revised course materials to develop her course with a similar purpose to EDUC 502. In addition, Ricardo Martinez, the graduate student of the project team, graduated in 2020 and joined the University of Nebraska in Lincoln as a faculty member. He employed some chapters of the textbook we wrote for his courses in the teacher preparation programs. He will continue to use the textbook for his courses for future mathematics teachers. The online textbook published in the ISU Digital Press will show that ISU is on the front line of equipping math teachers with research-based approaches for culturally and linguistically diverse students.
I, Ji-Yeong, and Ricardo Martinez. 2021. Teaching Math for Emergent Bilinguals: Building on Culture, Language, and Identity. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Digital Press. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.31274/isudp.2020.57