Date of Award

5-1-2024

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Literacy Teaching and Learning

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Erica Barnes

Committee Members

Jaime Puccioni, Alandeon Oliveira

Keywords

at-risk, kindergarten, mathematical language, multimodal discourse analysis, multimodal language development, subtraction

Subject Categories

Reading and Language

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore how shared book reading may promote meaningful, multimodal language interactions to support subtraction learning and language use and understanding for kindergarten students who have been previously identified as at-risk for mathematical difficulties. This study is underpinned by theoretical notions that language is developed in social contexts and is a multimodal phenomenon. In addition, this study is also shaped by sociocultural views of mathematics learning that position discourse at the core of mathematics learning. This study took a micro-ethnographic approach to qualitative research and utilized multimodal discourse analysis to analyze the data. The findings of this study illuminate the multimodal interactions that occurred during four shared reading sessions and present data that demonstrates how the students and their teacher utilized multiple modalities to jointly build knowledge about subtraction concepts and subtraction language. The three major findings demonstrate how: 1) the teacher used verbal and gestural scaffolding to help students learn and use subtraction language; 2) the students used multimodalities to identify potential moments of confusion and jointly build knowledge about subtraction concepts and language and; 3) the students demonstrated embodied cognition of subtraction concepts and language during shared reading through the use of gesturing. Upon interpreting the findings of this study and embedding them within the pre-existing research base, this study asserts how multimodal shared read alouds benefit at-risk kindergarteners’ understanding of subtraction concepts and language and support their mathematical language use.

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