What’s At Stake in a High-Stakes Math Test? Analysis of Multimodal Challenges for Emergent English Bilingual Learners

This chapter examines how instruction for standardized math examination proctors aid or impede them in guiding linguistic and culturally diverse students to perform their best in unfamiliar high-stakes exams. Drawing on critical multimodal analyses (Kress and van Leeuwen, Reading images: The grammar of visual design (2nd ed.). London: Routledge, 2006), this chapter makes visible the multimodal assumptions in these instructions and how institutionalized examination practices neglect culturally and linguistically diverse learners, jeopardize their access to higher education, and decrease their chances for becoming productive contributing members in their communities. A research agenda that sustains and nurtures English as additional language learners’ first language resources is suggested to direct attention to areas that could aid them in negotiating unfamiliar high-stakes multimodal texts.