Using Partner Interviews to Support Language and Mathematics Development for Elementary Multilingual Learners

Abstract While peer-to-peer conversations can be beneficial for children’s linguistic and mathematical development, the specific conditions needed to support optimal conversations remain elusive. As part of a larger project to infuse peer-to-peer interactions into mathematics instruction for multilingual students, 8- to 11-year-old children in the U.S. were videotaped by their teachers interviewing one another about their solution strategies to equal sharing problems. Partner Interviews were analyzed to determine the quality of the interactions between pairs using Barwell’s (2023) definition of negotiating meaning. This study examines the relationships among the quality of student negotiations, accuracy of strategies, similarities between strategies, and grade levels. Findings indicate that the degree to which students negotiated each other’s ideas varied, and the accuracy of students’ solutions was related to the quality of their negotiations. We provide a framework for assessing the quality of the peer-to-peer negotiations as well as concrete examples of the structures and scaffolds used to elicit these conversations.