DigitalCommons@Linfield

Culture Counts: Culture, Language & Mathematics in the U.S.

Jereld R. Nicholson Library

This study explores the interaction between culture, language, and mathematics through the experiences of multicultural individuals in the United States as they learn mathematics in English as a second language. Mathematics is generally regarded as a fundamental a-cultural truth, denying the role that humans have played in math’s construction and leaving the variations in understandings of mathematics around the world unacknowledged. This study critically examines this perspective through the contradicting experiences of multicultural individuals shared in qualitative interviews. I focus on the power relations implicit in not only the standard English of the classroom, but also the standard forms of mathematics that students must learn to succeed, and the effects that this power has on student comprehension and on students as subjects. The multicultural students I interviewed experienced struggles in their transition between math in different languages, due to linguistic and contextual challenges. As subjects, the students were forced to assimilate, describing their mathematics experiences largely in the form of struggles that extended into conflicts with their own identities. They spoke of feeling belittled and had a sense of being the “other,” which resulted in confronting their differences and conforming to the dominant form of mathematics that they learned at school in standard English. It is critical that the effects of the standardization of math in the classroom are acknowledged when educating students so that students like those in this study do not continue to be devalued and to struggle without knowing why.