Mikel W. Cole

Language Differentiation: Collaborative Translation to Support Bilingual Reading

Although a variety of research has investigated the use and benefits of home language in school settings, research on using translation to support school learning is scarce. With the goal of designing a differentiated and culturally relevant strategy that supports the reading of bilingual students, we worked with seventh-grade students in pull-out settings. After reading narrative texts, we invited students to collaboratively translate and evaluate thematically connected excerpts. Using distributed cognition and distributed expertise as a theoretical perspective, this qualitative case study shows that collaborative translation made student expertise visible and mediated the way that students participated and negotiated meaning.

Speaking to Read: Meta-Analysis of Peer-Mediated Learning for English Language Learners.

This meta-analysis examines the effectiveness of a group of instructional approaches (i.e., cooperative, collaborative, and peer tutoring) at improving literacy outcomes for English language learners. Main effects analyses of a sample of 28 experimental and quasi-experimental studies reveal that peer-mediation is more effective for ELLs than individualized or teacher-centered comparison conditions (g=.486, SE=.121, p<.001). A number of potential moderators were examined, and two study quality variables proved significant. Also, grade level was a significant moderator, with middle school students demonstrating much smaller gains than elementary or high school students. Finally, descriptive analysis of moderators provides tentative evidence that ELLs showed greater gains on word-level outcomes than text-level outcomes and that interventions for which peer-mediation was one of several tightly-woven components were twice as effective as interventions utilizing peer-mediation alone.

More than words: a literature review of language of mathematics research

This paper presents the results of a systematic search of the empirical literature on language of mathematics. Historically, mathematics educators and policy-makers have focused primarily on the importance of vocabulary in helping students move from everyday language to more formal mathematical language in order to promote academic outcomes. Utilizing Gee’s notion of Discourse, which includes many aspects of language as well as notions of identity and power, we synthesize the extant literature to explore the multifaceted ways researchers have extended the traditional focus on vocabulary. Our findings suggest that for students to be successful in mathematics classrooms, educators must become cognizant of the role of language in establishing classroom norms, negotiating identities, and challenging inequitable distributions of power. We also utilize Gee’s seven building blocks of language to identify aspects of language that remain ripe for future research.

'The Pumpkins Are Coming…"Vienen las Calabazas":…That Sounds Funny': Translanguaging Practices of Young Emergent Bilinguals.

In this paper, we utilize the theory of translanguaging to make sense of the biliterate activities of young emergent bilinguals in a before-school program for Latinx students at an elementary school. Our findings show that even early writers are able to draw from their full linguistic repertoire, utilizing orthographic and syntactic resources consciously, and continue to do so with increasing complexity as they get older and gain greater competence. The children in our study show how emergent bilinguals exhibit exceptionally sophisticated considerations of audience as they write across linguistically and culturally-diverse communities, navigating these in their writing, as they do in their daily lives. Opportunities for students to demonstrate and develop these skills are critical, especially in monolingual settings.