Commentary on the Chapter by Richard Barwell, “Heteroglossia in Multilingual Mathematics Classrooms”

Abstract

In his chapter, Barwell draws on the Bakhtinian notion of co-existing voices, heteroglossia, to point to the experience of four tensions in linguistically diverse mathematics classrooms, namely: 1) school versus home languages, 2) formal versus informal language in mathematics, 3) language policy versus mathematics classroom practices, and 4) a language for learning mathematics versus a language for getting on in the world. To further explore Barwell’s points, I bring up the metaphor of orchestration. My idea of orchestration refers to the manner in which various voices are individually used to produce coordinated results. As in the case with instruments in an orchestra, the final production requires successful individual practices with instruments that successfully interact with each other. My main argument here is that heteroglossia needs adequate practical orchestration, on the part of all members in a class: they all need to learn what the others can and cannot do, what distributions of work sound more adequate at each time, why is it that some of the ideas and contributions sound different depending on who introduces them, etc. By interpreting orchestration as something that includes all participants, not only the actions and choices by the teacher, it becomes clearer that students and teachers have lots in common.