37 results on '"Abrahamson, Dor"'
Search Results
2. Mathematics MOVES Me—Digital Solutions for Co-ordinating Enactive and Symbolic Resources: The Case of Positive and Negative Integer Arithmetic
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Anton, Jacqueline, Cosentino, Giulia, Gelsomini, Mirko, Sharma, Kshitij, Giannakos, Michail N, and Abrahamson, Dor
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Psychology ,Education ,Applied and Developmental Psychology - Published
- 2024
Catalog
3. Stimming as Thinking: a Critical Reevaluation of Self-Stimulatory Behavior as an Epistemic Resource for Inclusive Education
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Tancredi, Sofia and Abrahamson, Dor
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Education ,Specialist Studies In Education ,Basic Behavioral and Social Science ,Behavioral and Social Science ,Mental health ,Embodied cognition ,Fidgeting ,Instructional design ,Stereotypy ,Stimming ,Specialist Studies in Education ,Psychology ,Specialist studies in education ,Applied and developmental psychology - Abstract
Peripheral sensorimotor stimming activity, such as rocking and fidgeting, is widely considered irrelevant to and even distracting from learning. In this critical-pedagogy conceptual paper, we argue that stimming is an intrinsic part of adaptive functioning, interaction, and cognitive dynamics. We submit that when cultural resources build from students’ own sensorimotor dynamics, rather than subjugating them to hegemonic corporeal norms, learners’ intrinsic sensorimotor behaviors may be embraced and empowered as mental activity. This call for transformative inclusive pedagogy is of particular importance for neurodivergent children whose sensorimotor engagements have historically been ostracized as disruptive. Following a conceptual analysis of stimming that builds on a range of neuro-cognitive empirical studies drawing on post-cognitivist embodied cognition theory, we imagine inclusive educational futures that disrupt sedentary instructional design to elevate minoritized learners’ sensorimotor activity. As proof of concept, we present an example inclusive embodied activity, balance board math, a pedagogical tool designed to elicit stimming as thinking. We propose a set of design heuristics for realizing stimming’s pedagogical potential. more...
- Published
- 2024
4. Dancing geometry: imagining auxiliary lines by reflecting on physical movement
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Apsari, Ratih Ayu and Abrahamson, Dor
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Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Education ,Attentional anchor ,auxiliary lines ,embodied cognition ,dance ,design-based research ,geometry ,Other Mathematical Sciences ,Curriculum and pedagogy - Abstract
Constructing auxiliary lines is an important component skill in solving geometry problems, and yet it is difficult to teach, precisely because these lines are ‘invisible’ until they are actually drafted. Is there any intuitive resource that geometry students could possibly draw on to develop this skill? Is there any domain of human activity where we all naturally entertain imaginary lines, even if we are not aware of doing this? And yet, if so, how would these tacit imaginary lines come forth to be geometrical auxiliary lines? It turns out that dancers spontaneously imagine linear structures, known as attentional anchors, to help them enact their movements. These attentional anchors are drawn out in the dancer's subjective perception and are, therefore, invisible to others. Notwithstanding, we have used an embodied design-based research framework to create a gridded floor mat where students can render their covert dance-oriented attentional anchors as overt geometry-oriented auxiliary constructions. Situated in the cultural context of traditional Balinese dance, this practitioner-oriented paper demonstrates several activities for global classroom use by way of sharing some empirical results from implementing this pedagogical approach with young learners. An appendix lists a set of additional activities for dance-based geometry exploration. more...
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- 2024
5. Hybrid teaching intelligence: Lessons learned from an embodied mathematics learning experience
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Cosentino, Giulia, Anton, Jacqueline, Sharma, Kshitij, Gelsomini, Mirko, Giannakos, Michail, and Abrahamson, Dor
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Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Education Systems ,Specialist Studies In Education ,Education ,Clinical Research ,Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence ,Mental health ,Quality Education ,embodied learning ,hybrid intelligence ,teacher-AI collaboration ,Other Technology ,Specialist Studies in Education ,Specialist studies in education - Abstract
As AI increasingly enters classrooms, educational designers have begun investigating students' learning processes vis-à-vis simultaneous feedback from active sources—AI and the teacher. Nevertheless, there is a need to delve into a more comprehensive understanding of the orchestration of interactions between teachers and AI systems in educational settings. The research objective of this paper is to identify the challenges and opportunities when AI intertwines with instruction and examine how this hybrid teaching intelligence is being perceived by the students. The insights of this paper are extracted by analysing a case study that utilizes an AI-driven system (MOVES-NL) in the context of learning integer arithmetic. MOVES-NL is an advanced interactive tool that deploys whole-body movement and immediate formative feedback in a room-scale environment designed to enhance students' learning of integer arithmetic. In this paper, we present an in-situ study where 29 students in grades 6–8 interacted individually with MOVES-NL for approximately 1 hour each with the support of a facilitator/instructor. Mixed-methods analyses of multimodal data sources enabled a systematic multifaceted account of students' cognitive–affective experiences as they engaged with MOVES-NL while receiving human support (eg, by asking students to elaborate on their digital actions/decisions). Finally, we propose design insights for instructional and technology design in support of student hybrid learning. The findings of this research contribute to the ongoing discourse on the role of hybrid intelligence in supporting education by offering practical insights and recommendations for educators and designers seeking to optimize the integration of technology in classrooms. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic Students and teachers develop different relations with and through AI, beyond just interacting with it. AI can support and augment the teachers' capabilities. Hybrid intelligence (HI) has already demonstrated promising potential to advance current educational theories and practices. What this paper adds This research identifies the important learning opportunities and adversities emerging when AI intertwines with instruction and examines how learners perceive those moments. The results show that the system and the facilitator's feedback were complementary to the success of the learning experience. AI-enabled students to reflect upon and test their previous knowledge and guided teachers to work with students to consolidate challenging topics. Findings provide insights into how the teacher–AI collaboration could engage and motivate students to reflect conceptually upon mathematical rules. Implications for practice and/or policy This study encourages practitioners and scholars to consider hybrid teaching intelligence when designing student-centred AI learning tools, focusing on supporting the development of effective teacher–AI collaborative technologies. more...
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- 2024
6. A Multi-dimensional Framework for Documenting Students’ Heterogeneous Experiences with Programming Bugs
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DeLiema, David, Kwon, Yejin Angela, Chisholm, Andrea, Williams, Immanuel, Dahn, Maggie, Flood, Virginia J, Abrahamson, Dor, and Steen, Francis F
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Failure ,debugging ,design research ,interaction analysis ,Specialist Studies in Education ,Psychology ,Cognitive Sciences ,Education - Abstract
When teachers, researchers, and students describe productively responding to moments of failure in the learning process, what might this mean? Blending prior theoretical and empirical research on the relationship between failure and learning, and empirical results from four data sets that are part of a larger design-based research project, we investigate the heterogeneous processes teachers and students value and pursue following moments in which computer bugs thwart their immediate progress on an activity. These include: (1) resolving moments of failure; (2) avoiding recurring failures; (3) preparing for novel failures; (4) engaging with authority; and (5) calibrating confidence/efficacy. We investigate these processes taking into account the personal, social, and material context in which students and teachers collaborate when encountering broken computer programs, in addition to teachers’ planning efforts and the community’s reflections on past debugging experiences. We argue that moments of failure are not simply occasions for seeking resolutions. They are points of departure for decisions about how and what to foreground and interleave among a range of valued processes. Overall, this study aims to support research on the heterogeneous processes that shape how students new to a discipline such as computer programming respond to getting stuck. more...
- Published
- 2023
7. Demonstrating mathematics learning as the emergence of eye–hand dynamic equilibrium
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Abdu, Rotem, Tancredi, Sofia, Abrahamson, Dor, and Balasubramaniam, Ramesh
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Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Education Systems ,Specialist Studies In Education ,Education ,Complex dynamic systems ,Multimodal mathematics learning ,Proportion ,Coordination dynamics ,Learning analytics ,Other Mathematical Sciences ,Curriculum and pedagogy - Abstract
This paper combines recent developments in theories of knowledge (complex dynamic systems), technologies (embodied interactions), and research tools (multimodal data collection and analysis) to offer new insights into how conceptual mathematical understanding can emerge. A complex dynamic system view models mathematics learning in terms of a multimodal agent who encounters a set of task constraints. The learning process in this context includes destabilizing a systemic configuration (for example, coordination of eye and hand movements) and forming new dynamic stability adapted to the task constraints. To test this model empirically, we applied a method developed to study complex systems, recurrence quantification analysis (RQA), to investigate students’ eye–hand dynamics during a touchscreen mathematics activity for the concept of proportionality. We found that across participants (n = 32), fluently coordinated hand-movement solutions coincided with more stable and predictable gaze patterns. We present a case study of a prototypical participant’s hand–eye RQA and audio–video data to show how the student’s cognitive system transitioned out of prior coordination reflective of additive thinking into a new coordination that can ground multiplicative thinking. These findings constitute empirical substantiation in mathematics education research for cognition as a complex system transitioning among dynamic equilibria. more...
- Published
- 2023
8. Toward Synergizing Educational Research and Movement Sciences: a Dialogue on Learning as Developing Perception for Action
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Abrahamson, Dor and Mechsner, Franz
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Behavioral and Social Science ,Basic Behavioral and Social Science ,Clinical Research ,Mental health ,Quality Education ,Bimanual ,Enactivism ,Feedback ,Gestalt ,Mathematics ,Specialist Studies in Education ,Psychology ,Education - Abstract
What could possibly be a meaningful conversation between educational researchers and movement scientists? Curiously, they have much in common. Both groups of researchers increasingly (1) appreciate the human capacity to enact perceptually guided movement as an overarching psychological model of thinking, problem-solving, and learning; (2) theorize the development of perceptual structures, including actual and imaginary percepts, as a key epistemic vehicle for solving motor-control problems; and (3) promote a view of abstract thinking as movement-grounded and movement-oriented perceptual dynamics. Probing toward theoretical synergy between these traditionally disparate fields of research, the present article is built as an interdisciplinary conversation between two researchers—of mathematics education and movement science, respectively—who become aware of their intellectual alignment, garner new insights and inspirations from each other’s work, and speculate on implications of this concordance for their fields. Future exploration into the unity of movement and cognition could enrich dialogue between manifold disciplines, with the overall goal of clarifying, developing, and integrating an interdisciplinary common foundation and framework for the benefit of education. more...
- Published
- 2022
9. Characterizing learner behavior from touchscreen data
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Pardos, Zachary A, Rosenbaum, Leah F, and Abrahamson, Dor
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Information and Computing Sciences ,Education ,Machine Learning ,Networking and Information Technology R&D (NITRD) ,Bioengineering ,Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence ,Quality Education ,Specialist studies in education ,Human-centred computing - Abstract
As educational approaches increasingly adopt digital formats, data logs create a newfound wealth of information about student behaviors in those learning environments for educators and researchers. Yet making sense of that information, particularly to inform pedagogy, remains a significant challenge. Data from digital sensors that sample at the millisecond level of granularity, such as computer mouses or touchscreens, is notoriously difficult to computationally process and mine for patterns. Adding to the challenge is the limited domain knowledge of this biological sensor level of interaction which prohibits a comprehensive manual feature engineering approach to utilize those data streams. In this paper, we attempt to enhance the assessment capability of a touchscreen-based tutoring system by using Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) to predict students’ strategies from their 60hz data streams. We hypothesize that the ability of neural networks to learn representations automatically, instead of relying on human feature engineering, may benefit this classification task. Our classification models (including majority class) were trained and cross-validated at several levels on historical data which had been human coded with learners’ strategies. Our RNN approach to this difficult classification task moderately advances performance above logistic regression. We discuss the implications of this performance for enabling greater tutoring system autonomy. We also present visualizations that illustrate how this neural network approach to modeling sensor data can reveal patterns detected by the RNN. The surfaced patterns, regularized from a larger superset of mostly uncoded data, underscore the mix of normative and seemingly idiosyncratic behavior that characterizes the state space of learning at this high frequency level of observation. more...
- Published
- 2022
10. The Botetano arithmetic method: introduction and early evidence
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Botetano, Cesar and Abrahamson, Dor
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Clinical Research ,Behavioral and Social Science ,Pediatric ,No Poverty ,Quality Education ,Addition ,arithmetic ,division ,fingers ,mathematics ,multiplication ,PISA ,poverty ,place-value system ,subtraction ,Other Mathematical Sciences ,Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Education - Abstract
In Peru, national assessments repeatedly rank Indigenous mathematics students as the lowest performing across the entirety of Latin America and South America. Whereas lack of financial resources often predicts low measures, the history of educational practice teaches us that students’ poverty need not predict their educational outcomes–creative instructional approaches may turn the tables. Here we report on an innovative, body-based arithmetic technique, the Botetano Method, that has been enabling poverty rural children from remote mountainous regions of Peru to match and even greatly surpass their urban peers on comparable test items. The article explains the method's guiding humanistic and cognitive principles and then reports on findings from explorative action research that implemented and evaluated the method. Using observational methodologies, we argue that the students developed in their conceptual understanding of the content as well as in their attraction to the discipline, their professional identity, their personal pride in their achievement, and their general epistemic capacity for concentration and self-regulation. Throughout, we emphasize the methodological limitations of this grassroots proof-of-concept action research, which threaten the validity of the assertions. We speculate on early extensions of the method to literacy studies. more...
- Published
- 2022
11. Modeling nonlinear dynamics of fluency development in an embodied-design mathematics learning environment with Recurrence Quantification Analysis
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Tancredi, Sofia, Abdu, Rotem, Abrahamson, Dor, and Balasubramaniam, Ramesh
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Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Education Systems ,Education ,Bioengineering ,Specialist studies in education ,Human-centred computing - Abstract
Although cognitive activity has been modeled through the lens of dynamical systems theory, the field lacks robust demonstrations in the learning of mathematical concepts. One empirical context demonstrating potential for closing this gap is embodied design, wherein students learn to enact new movement patterns that instantiate mathematical schemes. Changes in students’ perceptuomotor behavior in such contexts have been described as bearing markers of systemic phase transitions, but no research to date has characterized these dynamics quantitatively. This study applied a nonlinear analysis method, continuous cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA), to touchscreen data excerpts from 39 study participants working with the Mathematics Imagery Trainer on the Parallel Bars problem. We then conducted linear regression analysis of a panel of five RQA metrics on learning phase (Exploration, Discovery, and Fluency) to identify how nonlinear dynamics changed as fluency developed. Results showed an increase in determinism from the Exploration to the Discovery phase, and an increase in recurrence rate, trapping time, mean line length, and normalized entropy from Discovery to Fluency phases. To put these dynamics in context, we qualitatively contrasted the RQA metric trajectories of two case study participants who developed different degrees of fluency. Our results support the hypothesized existence of phase transitions in the human–technology dynamical system during a math learning task. More broadly, this study illustrates the purchase of nonlinear methods on multimodal mathematics learning data and reveals perceptuomotor learning dynamics informative for the design and use of embodied-interaction technologies. more...
- Published
- 2021
12. Towards an ecological-dynamics design framework for embodied-interaction conceptual learning: the case of dynamic mathematics environments
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Abrahamson, Dor and Abdu, Rotem
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Quality Education ,Conceptual learning ,Constraint ,Dynamic mathematics environments ,Ecological dynamics ,Embodied cognition ,Enactivism ,GeoGebra ,Mathematics Imagery Trainer ,Specialist Studies in Education ,Education - Abstract
Designers of educational modules for conceptual learning often rely on procedural frameworks to chart out interaction mechanics through which users will develop target understandings. To date, however, there has been no systematic comparative evaluation of such frameworks in terms of their consequences for learning. This lack of empirical evaluation, we submit, is due to the intellectual challenge of pinning down in what fundamental sense these various frameworks differ and, therefore, along which parameters to conduct controlled comparative experimentation. Toward an empirical evaluation of educational-technology design frameworks, this conceptual paper considers the case of dynamic mathematics environments (DME), interactive modules for learning curricular content through manipulating virtual objects. We consider user activities in two paradigmatic DME genres that utilize similar HCI yet different mechanics. To compare these mechanics, we draw from complex dynamic systems theory a constraint-based model of embodied interaction. Task analyses suggest that whereas in one DME genre (GeoGebra) the interaction constraints are a priori inherent in the environment, in another DME genre (Mathematics Imagery Trainer) the constraints are ad hoc emergent in the task. We conjecture differential learning effects of these distinct constraint regimes, concluding that ad hoc emergent task constraints may better facilitate the naturalistic development of cognitive structures grounding targeted conceptual learning. We outline a future empirical research design to compare the pedagogical entailments of these two design frameworks. more...
- Published
- 2021
13. Grasp Actually: An Evolutionist Argument for Enactivist Mathematics Education
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Abrahamson, Dor
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Quality Education ,Constructivism ,Design ,Education ,Enactivism ,Mathematics ,Psychology ,Cognitive Sciences ,Developmental & Child Psychology - Abstract
What evolutionary account explains our capacity to reason mathematically? Identifying the biological provenance of mathematical thinking would bear on education, because we could then design learning environments that simulate ecologically authentic conditions for leveraging this universal phylogenetic inclination. The ancient mechanism coopted for mathematical activity, I propose, is our fundamental organismic capacity to improve our sensorimotor engagement with the environment by detecting, generating, and maintaining goal-oriented perceptual structures regulating action, whether actual or imaginary. As such, the phenomenology of grasping a mathematical notion is literally that - gripping the environment in a new way that promotes interaction. To argue for the plausibility of my thesis, I first survey embodiment literature to implicate cognition as constituted in perceptuomotor engagement. Then, I summarize findings from a design-based research project investigating relations between learning to move in new ways and learning to reason mathematically about these conceptual choreographies. As such, the project proposes educational implications of enactivist evolutionary biology. more...
- Published
- 2021
14. Learning Mathematics with Digital Resources: Reclaiming the Cognitive Role of Physical Movement
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Abrahamson, Dor, Ryokai, Kimiko, and Dimmel, Justin
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Creative Arts and Writing ,Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Education Systems ,Education ,Screen and Digital Media ,Behavioral and Social Science ,Basic Behavioral and Social Science ,Quality Education - Abstract
In 1837, Fröbel introduced a pedagogical regimen focused on a set of simple tangible objects, beginning with a yarn ball, that children were invited to manipulate in various ways. Montessori and other educational luminaries followed this tradition of designing instructional manipulatives. Later, when digital technologies were invented for information management, computation, and telecommunication, these new media were adopted by educators eager to offer individualized learning, reach remote students, and create multimedia experiences that would augment on traditional classroom resources, such as textbooks, writing instruments, and authentic objects of inquiry, including natural phenomena and cultural artifacts. While early electric technologies privileged the visual and auditory sensory modalities and were not interactive (e.g., television), human–computer interaction innovations and the advent of personal platforms increasingly evolved toward state-of-the art devices, content, and activities offering immersive multimodal experiences in imaginary landscapes (e.g., virtual reality). What might be the educational promise of these media? How do digital technologies serve mathematics students differently than yarn balls? How might theories of learning guide the design of digital environments? To investigate these questions, we survey the history of digital resources for mathematics education through the prism of philosophical and psychological theories – enactivist cognition and ecological dynamics – that look to capture the role of embodied interaction in cognitive development and conceptual learning. Then, through three case studies of contemporary digital educational resources, a proposal is put forth for how these embodied theories of learning could inform the design of educational technologies compatible with how people naturally learn. First, students should learn to enact new physical movement forms that have been designed to instantiate the targeted concepts. Students learn to move in these new ways by developing perceptual orientations that enable them to solve situated motor-control problems. Only then are these new cognitive skills formalized in disciplinary semiotic forms. Perhaps future technology can be as powerful a learning tool as the historical yarn ball. more...
- Published
- 2024
15. Embodied Design of Digital Resources for Mathematics Education: Theory, Methodology, and Framework of a Pedagogical Research Program
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Abrahamson, Dor, Tancredi, Sofia, Chen, Rachel SY, Flood, Virginia J, and Dutton, Elizabeth
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Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Education Systems ,Education - Abstract
Embodied design is a long-term multiproject educational research program committed to advancing the field’s understanding and improvement of teaching and learning processes. Operating in the design-based research approach, embodied design investigators imagine, build, and evaluate problem-solving activities designed for students to get first grips on targeted concepts through physical interaction with dedicated technologies. The research program strives to produce an intellectually coherent paradigm, replete with theoretical models, a design framework, sample activities, and mixed method instruments and analytic techniques for capturing and interpreting students’ multimodal sensorimotor behaviors and physiological responses as they engage with the activities. Embodied design posits that to understand a new concept you must first learn to move in a new way that enacts the concept and yet to move in a new way you must come to perceive the environment in a new way that affords new sensorimotor coordination. Designers therefore create motor-control problems whose perceptual solutions prospectively ground the target concept. Integrating radical enactivist philosophy, dynamic systems theory, and cultural–historical psychology, the paradigm explores how mathematical cognition of specific concepts emerges in perception–action loops and how students’ new enactive capacity then becomes socially elaborated in disciplinary discourse through the mediated adoption of professional tools as pragmatic-cum-semiotic frames of reference. The chapter lays out the philosophical and theoretical foundations of the embodied design paradigm and explains the design rationale and research findings through discussing representative activities. The chapter further explains how teachers facilitate the activities through multimodal tutorial intervention, how teachers creatively apply the paradigm more broadly, how the research program seeks to serve students of diverse sensorial capacity and neural composition, and what theoretical and practical challenges lie ahead. more...
- Published
- 2024
16. Dual-eye-tracking Vygotsky: A microgenetic account of a teaching/learning collaboration in an embodied-interaction technological tutorial for mathematics
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Shvarts, Anna and Abrahamson, Dor
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Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Education Systems ,Education ,Quality Education ,Attentional anchor ,Dual eye-tracking ,Joint attention ,Mathematics education ,Micro-zone of proximal development ,Teaching/learning process ,Specialist Studies in Education ,Psychology ,Education systems ,Specialist studies in education ,Applied and developmental psychology - Abstract
Vygotsky conceptualized the teaching/learning process as inherently collaborative. We extend prior evaluations of this claim by enlisting eye-tacking instruments to monitor the perceptual activity of four teacher–student dyads, as the student solves a challenging manipulation problem designed to ground the scientific notion of parabolas in their new sensorimotor routines. Analyzing each dyad's gaze paths led us to model the teaching/learning process as the emergence and dynamic transformation of intersubjective coupling between the student and tutor perception–action systems. While the student's sensory-motor coordination gradually gravitates toward an effective routine, the tutor's perception is iteratively launched from the student's current action, until the tutor detects an optimal moment for verbal intervention. In this micro-zone of proximal development, the student's motor action comes to align with the tutor's cultural-perspective strategy. Our elaboration of the cultural–historical approach to teaching/learning draws on research on joint attention and joint action from the cognitive sciences as well as the embodied-design approach from the educational sciences and demonstrates a compatibility of Vygotsky's heritage and complex dynamic systems theory. Finally, we discuss the educational value of the observed student–tutor intersubjective coupling phenomena, thus grounding the contribution of this multidisciplinary study within educational concerns. more...
- Published
- 2019
17. Rhythmic movement as a tacit enactment goal mobilizes the emergence of mathematical structures
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Palatnik, Alik and Abrahamson, Dor
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Embodiment ,Proportion ,Rhythm ,Technology ,Unit of measurement ,Other Mathematical Sciences ,Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Education - Abstract
This article concerns the purpose, function, and mechanisms of students’ rhythmic behaviors as they solve embodied-interaction problems, specifically problems that require assimilating quantitative information structures embedded into the environment. Analyzing multimodal data of one student tackling a bimanual interaction design for proportion, we observed the (1) evolution of coordinated movements with stable temporal–spatial qualities; (2) breakdown of this proto-rhythmic form when it failed to generalize across the problem space; (3) utilization of available resources to obtain greater specificity by way of measuring spatial spans of movements; (4) determination of an arithmetic pattern governing the sequence of spatial spans; and (5) creation of a meta-rhythmic form that reconciles continuous movement with the arithmetic pattern. The latter reconciliation selectively retired, modified, and recombined features of her previous form. Rhythmic enactment, even where it is not functionally imperative, appears to constitute a tacit adaptation goal. Its breakdown reveals latent phenomenal properties of the environment, creating opportunities for quantitative reasoning, ultimately supporting the learning of curricular content. more...
- Published
- 2018
18. Is Robotic Surgery Highlighting Critical Gaps in Resident Training?
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Green, Courtney A, Abrahamson, Dor, Chern, Hueylan, and O'Sullivan, Patricia S
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Clinical Competence ,Curriculum ,Education ,Medical ,Graduate ,Humans ,Internship and Residency ,Robotic Surgical Procedures ,Curriculum and Pedagogy - Published
- 2018
19. Building Reflective Practices in a Pre-service Math and Science Teacher Education Course That Focuses on Qualitative Video Analysis
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Barth-Cohen, Lauren A, Little, Angela J, and Abrahamson, Dor
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Clinical Research ,Quality Education ,Pre-service teachers ,qualitative analysis ,reflective practices ,video ,Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Education - Abstract
The use of video for in-service and pre-service teacher development has been gaining acceptance, and yet video remains a challenging and understudied tool. Many projects have used video to help pre-service and in-service teachers reflect on their own teaching processes, examine teacher–student interactions, and develop their professional vision. But rarely has video been used in ways more akin to qualitative education research that is focused on student learning. Even more rarely has this focus occurred at the earliest stages of pre-service teaching when students have not yet decided to pursue teaching careers. Yet here we argue that there are benefits to our approach. We examine a course for prospective pre-service math and science teachers at the University of California, Berkeley, that engages participants in qualitative video analysis to foster their reflective practice. This course is unique in that the prospective pre-service teachers engage in qualitative video analysis at a level characteristic of professional educational research, in that their analysis focuses on student learning of math and science content. We describe classroom activities that provide opportunities for the preservice teacher participants to better observe, notice, and interpret their students’ sociocognitive activity. The course culmination project involves participants developing and teaching lessons in a high school classroom. The participants then videotape the lessons and conduct qualitative video analysis. Results include detailed examples of two selected prospective pre-service teachers demonstrating coherent and effective approaches to conceptualizing the learning and teaching of mathematical and science content along with some potential design principles for building reflective practices through qualitative video projects. © 2018 Association for Science Teacher Education. more...
- Published
- 2018
20. Searching for buried treasure: uncovering discovery in discovery-based learning
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Chase, Kiera and Abrahamson, Dor
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Basic Behavioral and Social Science ,Behavioral and Social Science ,Clinical Research ,Design-based research ,Discovery learning ,Early algebra ,Technology ,Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Specialist Studies in Education ,Psychology ,Education - Abstract
Forty 4th and 9th grade students participated individually in tutorial interviews centered on a problem-solving activity designed for learning basic algebra mechanics through diagrammatic modeling of an engaging narrative about a buccaneering giant burying and unearthing her treasure on a desert island. Participants were randomly assigned to experimental (Discovery) and control (No-Discovery) conditions. Mixed-method analyses revealed greater learning gains for Discovery participants. Elaborating on a heuristic activity architecture for technology-based guided-discovery learning (Chase and Abrahamson 2015), we reveal a network of interrelated inferential constraints that learners iteratively calibrate as they each refine and reflect on their evolving models. We track the emergence of these constraints by analyzing annotated transcriptions of two case-study student sessions and argue for their constituting role in conceptual development. more...
- Published
- 2018
21. Learning Is Moving in New Ways: The Ecological Dynamics of Mathematics Education
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Abrahamson, Dor and Sánchez-García, Raúl
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Behavioral and Social Science ,Quality Education ,Specialist Studies in Education ,Education - Abstract
Whereas emerging technologies, such as touchscreen tablets, are bringing sensorimotor interaction back into mathematics learning activities, existing educational theory is not geared to inform or analyze passages from action to concept. We present case studies of tutor–student behaviors in an embodied-interaction learning environment, the Mathematical Imagery Trainer. Drawing on ecological dynamics—a blend of dynamical-systems theory and ecological psychology—we explain and demonstrate that: (a) students develop sensorimotor schemes as solutions to interaction problems; (b) each scheme is oriented on an attentional anchor—a real or imagined object, area, or other aspect or behavior of the perceptual manifold that emerges to facilitate motor-action coordination; and (c) when symbolic artifacts are introduced into the arena, they may both mediate new affordances for students’ motor-action control and shift their discourse into explicit mathematical re-visualization of the environment. Symbolic artifacts are ontological hybrids evolving from things with which you act to things with which you think. Students engaged in embodied-interaction learning activities are first attracted to symbolic artifacts as prehensible environmental features optimizing their grip on the world, yet in the course of enacting the improved control routines, the artifacts become frames of reference for establishing and articulating quantitative systems known as mathematical reasoning. more...
- Published
- 2016
22. The Enactive Roots of STEM: Rethinking Educational Design in Mathematics
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Hutto, Daniel D, Kirchhoff, Michael D, and Abrahamson, Dor
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Mind and Body ,Behavioral and Social Science ,Enactivism ,Ecological dynamics ,Attentional anchor ,Mathematics ,Specialist Studies in Education ,Psychology ,Education - Abstract
New and radically reformative thinking about the enactive and embodied basis of cognition holds out the promise of moving forward age-old debates about whether we learn and how we learn. The radical enactive, embodied view of cognition (REC) poses a direct, and unmitigated, challenge to the trademark assumptions of traditional cognitivist theories of mind— those that characterize cognition as always and everywhere grounded in the manipulation of contentful representations of some kind. REC has had some success in understanding how sports skills and expertise are acquired. But, REC approaches appear to encounter a natural obstacle when it comes to understanding skill acquisition in knowledge-rich, conceptually based domains like the hard sciences and mathematics. This paper offers a proof of concept that REC’s reach can be usefully extended into the domain of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning, especially when it comes to understanding the deep roots of such learning. In making this case, this paper has five main parts. The section “Ancient Intellectualism and the REC Challenge” briefly introduces REC and situates it with respect to rival views about the cognitive basis of learning. The “Learning REConceived: from Sports to STEM?” section outlines the substantive contribution REC makes to understanding skill acquisition in the domain of sports and identifies reasons for doubting that it will be possible to apply the same approach to knowledge-rich STEM domains. The “Mathematics as Embodied Practice” section gives the general layout for how to understand mathematics as an embodied practice. The section “The Importance of Attentional Anchors” introduces the concept “attentional anchor” and establishes why attentional anchors are important to educational design in STEM domains like mathematics. Finally, drawing on some exciting new empirical studies, the section “Seeing Attentional Anchors” demonstrates how REC can contribute to understanding the roots of STEM learning and inform its learning design, focusing on the case of mathematics. more...
- Published
- 2015
23. Interfacing practices: domain theory emerges via collaborative reflection
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Abrahamson, Dor and Chase, Kiera
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algebra ,boundary object ,collaboration ,design research ,technology ,transparency ,Education ,Philosophy and Religious Studies - Abstract
Can reflective practice help an interdisciplinary team collaborate? When a new team begins negotiating their working process toward achieving project deliverables, members implicitly bring diverse professional practices to the table. Once minimal common ground has been established, members specify what they each need from the other in order to implement their respective expertise. This process of imposing mutual constraints results in adjusted workflow protocols that may modify participants’ regular course of action yet are vital for facilitating the collaboration. Yet, we argue, this discursive process of negotiating collaboration protocols in interdisciplinary projects may result in more than just surface reconfiguration of local practices. The negotiation may yield an articulated reification of implicit know-how in the form of new theoretical constructs bearing potential impact beyond the local context of the project. We support the argument by presenting and analyzing archived records gathered from an interdisciplinary project, in which educational researchers and technology engineers collaborated in creating new instructional media for young mathematics students. In the course of struggling to formulate a mutually coherent workflow, the team ‘stepped back’ to formulate new goals that would address their coordination challenges. In turn, these goals implicated a new theoretical architecture that we present. more...
- Published
- 2015
24. Intermodality in Multimodal Learning Analytics for Cognitive Theory Development: A Case from Embodied Design for Mathematics Learning
- Author
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Tancredi, Sofia, Abdu, Rotem, Balasubramaniam, Ramesh, and Abrahamson, Dor
- Subjects
Education ,Specialist Studies In Education - Abstract
Multimodal Learning Analytics (MMLA) grant us insight into learners’ physiological, cognitive, and behavioral activity as it unfolds. In this chapter, we query the relations among modalities, intermodality, in the context of a designbased research program studying the relations between learning to move in new ways and learning to think in new ways. In the first part, we reflect on how different methods have afforded purchase on the investigation, development, and elaboration of theoretical claims about the multimodal enactment of cognitive events, culminating in the use of Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA) to quantify the microgenesis of stable new patterns in hand movement and gaze. In the second part, we analyze an RQA case study spanning across hand and gaze modalities to examine the emergence of intermodal coordination at a critical moment in the mathematical task. We conclude with implications and open questions around intermodality in embodied learning. more...
- Published
- 2022
25. Toward an enactivist mathematics pedagogy
- Author
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Abrahamson, Dor, Dutton, Elizabeth, and Bakker, Arthur
- Subjects
Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Education Systems ,Education ,Basic Behavioral and Social Science ,Behavioral and Social Science - Published
- 2022
26. Reinventing Realistic Mathematics Education at Berkeley—Emergence and Development of a Course for Pre-service Teachers
- Author
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Abrahamson, Dor, Zolkower, Betina, and Stone, Elisa
- Subjects
Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Education Systems ,Education ,Course development ,Mathematics education ,Pre-service teachers ,Problem solving ,Undergraduate - Abstract
Abstract: A central principle of Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) is that learners experience guided opportunities to reconstruct cultural practices and artefacts in the course of attempting to solve engaging problems using emerging resources as structuring tools. The same principle plays out at the meta level, across ages, geography, and functions, where instructors experience opportunities to reinvent RME as they adapt its principles to satisfy specific design constraints and local needs. This chapter recounts a collaborative effort to create at the Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, graduate and undergraduate courses for pre-service mathematics teachers that incorporates tenets of RME, while accommodating to prescribed and emerging constraints of local contexts, such as stipulation of federal funding, as well as the collective histories and prior schooling experiences of pre-service teachers, most of whom are encountering this didactical approach for the first time. more...
- Published
- 2020
27. Debugging as a Context for Fostering Reflection on Critical Thinking and Emotion
- Author
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DeLiema, David, Dahn, Maggie, Flood, Virginia J, Asuncion, Ana, Abrahamson, Dor, Enyedy, Noel, and Steen, Francis
- Subjects
Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Education - Abstract
The process of handling breakdowns in computer programming, a practice known as debugging, provides an auspicious context for fostering teacher-student communication about critical thinking. Toward this end, this chapter explores two practical classroom designs. The first design focuses on student journaling and art making about critical thinking processes and emotional experiences that undergird debugging. The second design focuses on instructors modeling and prompting for reflection on critical thinking strategies during debugging. These teaching strategies lead to growth in students’ impressions of their skills for handling failure and their confidence during failure, both vital components of environments that promote deeper learning. more...
- Published
- 2019
28. A Better Story: An Embodied-Design Argument for Generic Manipulatives
- Author
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Rosen, Dana, Palatnik, Alik, and Abrahamson, Dor
- Subjects
Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Education Systems ,Education ,Attentional anchor ,Educational design ,Embodiment ,Formalization ,Manipulatives ,Mathematics ,Sensorimotor scheme ,Technology - Published
- 2018
29. Teaching with embodied learning technologies for mathematics: responsive teaching for embodied learning
- Author
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Flood, Virginia, Shvarts, A.Y., Abrahamson, Dor, Sub Mathematics Education, Mathematics Education, Sub Mathematics Education, and Mathematics Education
- Subjects
Conversation analysis ,General Mathematics ,Teaching method ,Educational technology ,Embodied learning ,Informal learning ,Ethnomethodology ,Embodied cognition ,Education ,Conversationanalysis ,Comprehension ,Gesture ,Responsive teaching ,Digital technology ,ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION ,Mathematics education ,Curriculum and Pedagogy - Abstract
As technologies that put the body at the center of mathematics learning enter formal and informal learning spaces, we still know little about the teaching methods educators can use to support students’ learning with these specialized systems. Drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA) and the Co-Operative Action framework, we present three multimodal ways that educators can be responsive to learners’ embodied ideas and help them transform sensorimotor patterns into mathematically significant perceptions. These techniques include (1) encouraging learners to use gesture to express and reflect on their ideas, (2) presenting multimodal candidate understandings to check comprehension of learners’ embodied ideas, and (3) co-constructing multimodally expressed embodied ideas with learners. We demonstrate how these techniques create opportunities for learning and discuss implications for a multimodal, embodied practice of responsive teaching. more...
- Published
- 2020
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
30. Embodiment and Embodied Design
- Author
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Abrahamson, Dor and Lindgren, Robb
- Subjects
Curriculum and Pedagogy ,Education Systems ,Specialist Studies In Education ,Education ,Quality Education - Abstract
Picture this. A preverbal infant straddles the center of a seesaw. She gently tilts her weight back and forth from one side to the other, sensing as each side tips downward and then back up again. This child cannot articulate her observations in simple words, let alone in scientific jargon. Can she learn anything from this experience? If so, what is she learning, and what role might such learning play in her future interactions in the world? Of course, this is a nonverbal bodily experience, and any learning that occurs must be bodily, physical learning. But does this nonverbal bodily experience have anything to do with the sort of learning that takes place in schools - learning verbal and abstract concepts? In this chapter, we argue that the body has everything to do with learning, even learning of abstract concepts. Take mathematics, for example. Mathematical practice is thought to be about producing and manipulating arbitrary symbolic inscriptions that bear abstract, universal truisms untainted by human corporeality. Mathematics is thought to epitomize our species’ collective historical achievement of transcending and, perhaps, escaping the mundane, material condition of having a body governed by haphazard terrestrial circumstance. Surely mathematics is disembodied! more...
- Published
- 2014
31. Using Learning Path Research to Balance Mathematics Education: teaching/learning for understanding and fluency
- Author
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Fuson, Karen C., Murata, Aki, Abrahamson, Dor, Cohen Kadosh, Roi, book editor, and Dowker, Ann, book editor
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
32. Fostering Hooks and Shifts: Tutorial Tactics for Guided Mathematical Discovery
- Author
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Abrahamson, Dor, Gutiérrez, Jose, Charoenying, Timothy, Negrete, Andrea, and Bumbacher, Engin
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
33. Dual-eye-tracking Vygotsky: A microgenetic account of a teaching/learning collaboration in an embodied-interaction technological tutorial for mathematics
- Author
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Shvarts, A.Y., Abrahamson, Dor, Mathematics Education, Sub Mathematics Education, Mathematics Education, and Sub Mathematics Education
- Subjects
Joint attention ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Micro-zone of proximal development ,Attentional anchor ,teaching/learning process ,Education ,Perception ,ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION ,Psychology ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Dual eye-tracking ,TUTOR ,computer.programming_language ,media_common ,Cognitive science ,joint attention ,05 social sciences ,Teaching/learning process ,050301 education ,mathematics education ,Gaze ,attentional anchor ,Mathematics education ,dual eye-tracking (DUET) ,Quality Education ,micro-zone of proximal development ,Embodied cognition ,Eye tracking ,Specialist Studies in Education ,Teaching learning ,0503 education ,computer ,050104 developmental & child psychology ,Dyad - Abstract
Vygotsky conceptualized the teaching/learning process as inherently collaborative. We extend prior evaluations of this claim by enlisting eye-tacking instruments to monitor the perceptual activity of four teacher–student dyads, as the student solves a challenging manipulation problem designed to ground the scientific notion of parabolas in their new sensorimotor routines. Analyzing each dyad’s gaze paths led us to model the teaching/learning process as the emergence and dynamic transformation of intersubjective coupling between the student and tutor perception–action systems. While the student’s sensory-motor coordination gradually gravitates toward an effective routine, the tutor’s perception is iteratively launched from the student’s current action, until the tutor detects an optimal moment for verbal intervention. In this micro-zone of proximal development, the student’s motor action comes to align with the tutor’s cultural-perspective strategy. Our elaboration of the cultural–historical approach to teaching/learning draws on research on joint attention and joint action from the cognitive sciences as well as the embodied-design approach from the educational sciences and demonstrates a compatibility of Vygotsky’s heritage and complex dynamic systems theory. Finally, we discuss the educational value of the observed student–tutor intersubjective coupling phenomena, thus grounding the contribution of this multidisciplinary study within educational concerns. more...
- Published
- 2019
34. Moving forward: In search of synergy across diverse views on the role of physical movement in design for stem education
- Author
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Abrahamson, Dor, Andrade, Alejandro, Bakker, Arthur, Nathan, Mitchell J., Walkington, Candace, Lindgren, Robb, Brown, David E., Zohar, Asnat R., Levy, Sharona T., Danish, Joshua A., Maltese, Adam V., Enyedy, Noel, Humburg, Megan, Saleh, Asmalina, Dahn, Maggie, Lee, Christine, Tu, Xintian, Davis, Bria, Georgen, Chris, Lindwall, Oskar, Mathematics Education, and Sub Mathematics Education more...
- Subjects
Computer Science (miscellaneous) ,Education - Abstract
Inspired by the current embodiment turn in the cognitive sciences, researchers of STEM teaching and learning have been evaluating implications of this turn for educational theory and practice. But whereas design researchers have been developing domain-specific theories that implicate the role of physical movement in conceptual learning, the field has yet to agree on a conceptually coherent and empirically validated framework for leveraging and shaping students’ capacity for physical movement as a socio–cognitive educational resource. This symposium thus convenes to ask, “What is movement in relation to concepts such that we can design for learning?” To stimulate discussion, we highlight an emerging tension across a set of innovative technological designs with respect to the framing question of whether students should discover an activity’s targeted movement forms themselves or that these forms should be cued directly. Our content domains span mathematics (proportions, geometry), physics, chemistry, and ecological system dynamics (predator–prey, bees). more...
- Published
- 2018
35. Both Rhyme and Reason: Toward Design That Goes Beyond What Meets the Eye.
- Author
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Abrahamson, Dor
- Subjects
MATHEMATICS education ,VISUAL perception ,EDUCATION ,TEACHING ,LEARNING - Abstract
Visualizations of perceptually privileged mathematical constructs, e.g., proportionality, support effective pedagogical activity only to the extent that students can interpret the visualizations as expressing familiar mathematical operationsâ??seeing only that, and not how, two representations are related constitutes visually powerful yet conceptually weak situatedness. I draw on empirical results from 4 studies, in which students worked with learning tools for proportionality, probability, and statistics. For each, I evaluate whether the students can be said to have constructed conceptual understanding of the targeted mathematical content. I conclude that learning environments should enable students to evaluate their perceptual judgment empiricallyâ??to articulate, or at least corroborate visual thinking with step-by-step procedures, e.g., synoptic views of multiplicative constructs should include tools for repeated-addition entry. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...
- Published
- 2007
36. DISCOVERY RECONCElVED: PRODUCT BEFORE PROCESS.
- Author
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Abrahamson, Dor
- Subjects
MATHEMATICS education ,EDUCATION ,ARTICULATION (Education) ,DISTINCTION (Philosophy) ,CYBERNETICS ,LEARNING - Abstract
The article discusses the theoretical articulation of discovery pedagogy in mathematics learning activities. It examines the distinction between process and product in mathematical learning activities. It also examines the mathematical concept using data to offer an empirically study regarding what students should discover through discovery learning. more...
- Published
- 2012
37. Hooks and Shifts: A Dialectical Study of Mediated Discovery.
- Author
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Abrahamson, Dor, Trninic, Dragan, Gutiérrez, Jose, Huth, Jacob, and Lee, Rosa
- Subjects
CONSTRUCTIVISM (Education) ,EDUCATION ,COGNITION ,SOCIOCULTURAL factors ,SOCIAL factors - Abstract
Radical constructivists advocate discovery-based pedagogical regimes that enable students to incrementally and continuously adapt their cognitive structures to the instrumented cultural environment. Some sociocultural theorists, however, maintain that learning implies discontinuity in conceptual development, because novices must appropriate expert analyses that are schematically incommensurate with their naive views. Adopting a conciliatory, dialectical perspective, we concur that naive and analytic schemes are operationally distinct and that cultural-historical artifacts are instrumental in schematic reconfiguration yet argue that students can be steered to bootstrap this reconfiguration in situ; moreover, students can do so without any direct modeling from persons fluent in the situated use of the artifacts. To support the plausibility of this mediated-discovery hypothesis, we present and analyze vignettes selected from empirical data gathered in a conjecture-driven design-based research study investigating the microgenesis of proportional reasoning through guided engagement in technology-based embodied interaction. 22 Grade 4-6 students participated in individual or paired semi-structured tutorial clinical interviews, in which they were tasked to remote-control the location of virtual objects on a computer display monitor so as to elicit a target feedback of making the screen green. The screen would be green only when the objects were manipulated on the screen in accord with a 'mystery' rule. Once the participants had developed and articulated a successful manipulation strategy, we interpolated various symbolic artifacts onto the problem space, such as a Cartesian grid. Participants appropriated the artifacts as strategic or discursive means of accomplishing their goals. Yet, so doing, they found themselves attending to and engaging certain other embedded affordances in these artifacts that they had not initially noticed yet were supporting performance subgoals. Consequently, their operation schemas were surreptitiously modulated or reconfigured-they saw the situation anew and, moreover, acknowledged their emergent strategies as enabling advantageous interaction. We propose to characterize this two-step guided re-invention process as: (a) hooking-engaging an artifact as an enabling, enactive, enhancing, evaluative, or explanatory means of effecting and elaborating a current strategy; and (b) shifting-tacitly reconfiguring current strategy in response to the hooked artifact's emergent affordances that are disclosed only through actively engaging the artifact. Looking closely at two cases and surveying others, we delineate mediated interaction factors enabling or impeding hook-and-shift learning. The apparent cognitive-pedagogical utility of these behaviors suggests that this ontological innovation could inform the development of a heuristic design principle for deliberately fostering similar learning experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...
- Published
- 2011
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
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