Abstract:

This study examines how digital learning spaces—specifically online mathematics tutoring—mediate a migrant student’s translanguaging practices and support the development of learner agency within Korea’s monolingual-dominant schooling system. Drawing on a qualitative single-case study of a 16-year-old Russian-speaking ethnic Korean student (“Nikolai”), the research investigates how formal schooling and technology-mediated tutoring interact to shape his access to meaning-making resources, academic identity, and language learning trajectories. The study is grounded in translanguaging and socioculturally mediated agency and responds to recent calls to understand technology-supported learning as a critical site for migrant students’ linguistic and emotional negotiation.

Data include three weeks of school-based observations, 34 video-recorded online tutoring sessions, 18 interviews with the student, tutors, and teachers, and a range of artifacts such as report cards and bilingual math materials. The dual learning contexts provided starkly contrasting linguistic conditions: mainstream high school classrooms enforced an implicit Korean-only policy, limiting Nikolai’s participation and reinforcing feelings of stigma, while online tutoring sessions offered a multilingual, adaptive space that legitimized his use of Russian, Korean, and other semiotic resources.

Findings reveal several key contributions. First, digital tutoring environments functioned as translanguaging spaces where Nikolai could strategically mobilize Russian to build conceptual understanding and gradually appropriate Korean mathematical terminology. The shift from a Russian-dominant tutoring phase to a Korean-dominant one reflected his evolving learning goals and demonstrated his growing metalinguistic awareness of what was required for success in Korean classrooms. Second, online tutoring served as a site for agentive recalibration: Nikolai actively requested pedagogical adjustments, negotiated language choice with tutors, and used translanguaging strategically for comprehension, problem solving, and confidence building. Third, the contrast between school constraints and digital affordances shows that technologically mediated learning can counterbalance monolingual school ideologies, providing affective safety, linguistic flexibility, and personalized scaffolding that are often absent in formal schooling.

Across contexts, Nikolai’s actions illustrate agency as tactical navigation: while school required silence, help-seeking, and discreet use of translation apps, online tutoring encouraged multilingual experimentation, dialogue, and identity affirmation. The findings demonstrate that digital tutoring is not merely supplementary support but a critical mediational space that enables migrant learners to expand repertoires, rehearse academic language, and resist deficit positioning.

This study contributes to broader discussions on multilingual education and educational technology by showing how digital platforms can transform constraints into opportunities for participation and learning. It also highlights the need for policy shifts that integrate structured translanguaging spaces within schools and recognize online tutoring as an essential component of support for migrant learners in increasingly multilingual societies.

Keywords:

Digital learning spaces, Online tutoring, Translanguaging, Learner agency, Migrant students.