The number of multilingual international students in post-secondary mathematics classrooms in the United States is increasing. As language is related to students’ access to mathematics learning and their (mathematics) identities, it shapes their experiences as a doer of mathematics. However, as multilingual international students move to the United States, they routinely experience a change in the language of instruction, which influences their position as mathematics doers. Yet very little is known about their experiences in their current post-secondary mathematics classrooms and who they are. The purpose of this study is to understand their lived experiences that influenced their past, current, and future relationship to mathematics by using narrative inquiry. Through this study, I call for more attention to multilingual international students and further research about how to serve this growing population in post-secondary mathematics education. In this narrative inquiry, I worked with four post-secondary multilingual international mathematics students, Jia, Maria, Helena, and Jihyun (all pseudonyms), to study their mathematics identities and see how they leverage their languages in different contexts. Each of the participants’ essays about their relationship to mathematics was collected first, and then there were an hour to 1.5-hour synchronous interviews with each of the participants. Asynchronous interviews were then conducted in a written form based on their essay and synchronous interviews. All the verbal data were transcribed and analyzed to create a narrative for each participant using narrative analysis. All four participants came from different countries. Jia shared her challenges in undergraduate mathematics courses, especially in a groupwork-based course. She also shared how she used her first language and English in different contexts. Although Maria shared some thoughts about being multilingual, she focused more on her experiences of being a woman in mathematics and the social challenges as an international student. Helena shared how her first language, Spanish, is intricate to how she sees her world. Her narrative raises questions about the perceived hierarchies of languages in mathematics. Lastly, Jihyun shared cultural and linguistic differences that she noticed as she moved to the United States. Her case shows how different stereotypes about gender and race intersectionally shape her actions. Across the four participants’ experiences, three main themes were found: 1) the participant’s understanding of the roles of language in mathematics and how they use their languages in doing mathematics; 2) some participants’ understanding of how race and nationality shape their actions, and 3) the participants’ marginalized experiences because of their gender and their reaction to such a stereotype. Further, how intersections of these multiple social identities can influence participants’ actions¬ was explained using the case of Jihyun, a Korean woman. This work contributes to the documentation of post-secondary multilingual international students’ experiences in the United States and their identities from their past experiences, which were rarely focused on in existing literature on post-secondary mathematics education. Even though the mathematics education field as a research area has tried to escape the deficit perspective toward multilingual students, some participants were still attributing their challenges to some internal deficit they perceived. Changing of the narrative in the education field and providing a better learning environment for them where their languages are more valued would be necessary.
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