Abstract The importance of parental influences in their children’s mathematics learning is widely recognised, but there exist research gaps regarding the multilingual and multicultural perspectives on non-English contexts and the roles of siblings. This study investigated two immigrant secondary students (Russian and Vietnamese) in Shanghai to explore the multilingual and multicultural resources their family provided and how these resources were enacted through language practices to influence students’ perceived mathematics learning. A conceptual framework was established to explore various types of multilingual and multicultural resources, language practices and perceived mathematics learning, and data were collected by interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. Results reveal dialogical resources for school-directed homework and curricular content as most important in both cases, with the Russian student additionally benefiting from cultural resources regarding the diversity of mathematical notations and mathematics content. The Russian parents enacted their dialogical resources through various language practices evenly and their cultural resources through juxtaposing mathematics content in different languages and cultures, which eventually influenced their daughter’s conceptual understanding and solving of problems. The Vietnamese family (parents and an elder sibling) generally enacted their resources through their heteroglossia in mathematics communications, which predominantly influenced their child in solving problems. With these results, we argue schools should invite immigrant students’ families to share their funds of knowledge, and future studies need to consider various influences from siblings and other family members as well as broader cultural resources.
Luo et al. (Fri,) studied this question.