Understanding Refugee Families’ Potentials for Supporting Children’s Mathematics Learning

Abstract

Background/Context:

We lack a nuanced understanding of the potentials and needs of multilingual families, particularly those with forced displacement histories, in contributing to children’s mathematics learning. As educators seek to increase refugee students’ access to powerful mathematics learning, an understanding of how refugee families view and participate in their children’s mathematics learning can offer insights for how we might reach the goal of equitable educational access.

Purpose/Focus of Study:

In the GÖÇ-MAT project, we focused on developing equitable mathematics teaching practices with teachers (K–3) in schools highly populated with refugee children. The research that we present here, drawing on notions of community cultural wealth capital, offers a multifaceted view of how families of young children with refugee status articulated understandings of their roles in children’s mathematics learning.

Setting:

Our fieldwork took place in four different cities highly populated by people with refugee status in Turkey, the country located at the center of the worldwide trend of mass migration.

Participants:

We examined data from families (N = 54, mainly from Syria) who participated in the family engagement component of the larger project, carried out through multilingual family mathematics workshops.

Research Design:

We employed qualitative research methods and conducted two-year-long observations and video recordings in the context of multilingual family mathematics workshops. In the workshops, families, teachers, and researchers engaged in patterns and early algebra activities, as well as in family conversations facilitated through open-ended prompts, mathematics picture books, and educational journey maps. Over two years, we collected data comprising recorded dialogues with families, artifacts produced in the workshops, and video data of families’ mathematical interactions.

Findings:

Our analysis yielded two key understandings: (1) Family engagement practices around mathematics set a context to realize the nuanced nature of refugee families’ cultural wealth and efforts for their children’s education; and (2) refugee families’ knowledge of mathematics itself as a discipline and their mathematical capital, which are typically not recognized in school contexts, can serve as resources for mathematics teaching.

Conclusions/Recommendations:

The findings provide insight for teachers, researchers, and policy makers about how we might engage multilingual children and families with refugee status in powerful ways in mathematics education.