As our country has turned into a multicultural society, the number of students from multicultural families is on the rise. And their school adjustment is viewed as one of critical social issues along with the increase in the number of these students. ...
As our country has turned into a multicultural society, the number of students from multicultural families is on the rise. And their school adjustment is viewed as one of critical social issues along with the increase in the number of these students. As a matter of fact, these students face difficulties in learning due to differences in cultural background and the poor Korean proficiency of one of their parents. Action studies that have investigated the learning of multicultural students found that existing education just focused on supporting their acquisition of the Korean language to get rid of gaps in academic achievement caused by linguistic difficulties. But mathematics that is a basic discipline to foster creative thinking faculty is one of important subjects for their school lives. Furthermore, that is one of major subjects to boost their will to learn and sense of achievement. Accordingly, it's required to research the mathematics learning of elementary school students from multicultural families.
The purpose of this study was to make a case study of the mathematics learning of elementary school students from multicultural students in an effort to explore how to facilitate their mathematics learning. Three research questions were posed:
1. What are the will of school children from multicultural families to learn and their attitude?
2. What support do their teachers and parents offer in terms of mathematics learning?
3. What measures should be taken to assist them in mathematics learning?
The subjects in this study were five selected students from multicultural families who were in their fourth, fifth and sixth grades in a rural elementary school in Gyeonggi Province. A collective case study was implemented to address the research questions by interviewing them and by making a participant observation. The interview data, the observation data and the interview data with their teachers were all gathered to collect math learning cases of the students. The collected data were analyzed step by step according to Stake(1995)'s four types of data analysis and interpretation, and then the data were categorized into two major themes, 10 minor themes and sense groups.
The major findings of the study were as follows:
First, as for a will to learn mathematics and learning attitude, the elementary school students from multicultural families had a strong will to learn math, but their achievement level and confidence were at a low level. They considered math to be difficult to learn all the time, but they vaguely expected themselves to do better, though they didn't have confidence about math. In terms of learning content, they found it easy to calculate to solve problems, but found it quite difficult to explain their thinking process or how to solve the problems. Also, they faced difficulties in solving problems that were not difficult to solve yet were presented through writing or by using an example. In that case, they had a tendency just to follow the way their teachers explained or solved or to memorize how to solve the problems. Besides, they had difficulties in math learning because of their ignorance of math learning methods or learning strategies. They learned math just to get good scores or to be praised.
Second, concerning support for math learning, the elementary school students from multicultural families were under the largest influence of support and guidance from their teachers at school. They were highly affected when they were praised by their teachers, or relied on their detailed explanation, and their will to learn became stronger when they received more attention and support. On the contrary, they didn't receive proper support or encouragement from their parents at home. Specifically, the students thought that their mothers who were from other countries didn't know about what they learned, and they were scarcely praised by their mothers in relation to learning, either.
Third, the elementary school students from multicultural families showed a more improvement in math achievement and gained more successful experience when their teachers paid more attention to them and when the teachers offered more assistance, and the level of their improvement in achievement and that of successful experience depended on how much support their parents provided. In addition, their successful experience in math was associated with their learning in other classes, school adjustment and confidence.
Given the major findings of the study, there are some suggestions on math learning of students from multicultural families:
First, every school should urge teachers to give encouragement and support for these students in consideration of individual variances in background and level.
Second, research efforts should be directed into the successful learning support experience of parents from multicultural families. The kind of environments that allow students to be assisted in their learning at home should be prepared by presenting the successful cases of learning support.
Third, the findings of the study showed that support and attention from teachers exerted a large influence on the studies of students from multicultural families. Therefore what differences support and attention from teachers make to the math academic achievement of students should be studied.
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