Embodied design: the emergence of proportional reasoning in interaction with a table application

Description

It has become increasingly clear that conceptual development, even in the abstract domain of mathematics, can be promoted by particular engagement of the body with its environment. This idea has become known under the umbrella of embodied cognition. This talk aims to show what mathematics education can learn from research on embodied cognition. In the study presented here we redesigned an iPad application for fostering proportional reasoning and tested it on students with a wide range of ability and age (9-15; N = 58). With the help of eye-tracking technology we were able to identify emerging patterns in students’ hand movements, eye movements and reasoning when solving proportion tasks. The data provide the opportunity to study processes that Piaget would call reflective abstraction but then at a more micro-scale that was hitherto impossible without eye-tracking technology. We end with the question how such embodied design can be used in mathematics education more generally.

Period	8 Dec 2015
Held at	University of Bremen, Germany