Kelton, M. L., & Ma, J. Y. (2018). Reconfiguring mathematical settings and activity through multi-party, whole-body collaboration. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 98(2), 177–196.
Summary: Not sure I fully grasped the argument of this journal article, despite having tried multiple times to read it since last weekend. I found the article unnecessarily jargon-laden, to the point that it obscured any objective evaluation of its original insights or contributions. The authors appear to argue that engaging the full scope of bodily movement within a purposefully designed environment can have wonderful effects on the learning of mathematics. To support this claim, they refer to two instructional cases, WSNL and W+H. The work reminded me of the Montessori approach, which similarly emphasizes varied movement within carefully designed environments to support mathematical learning, though the approach does not go so far as to reconfigure space and bodies in analogous ways (though I don't think this - the analogous relationship - is the first time anyone tried it or argued for it). It's possible that there were some neat insights and nuances in the present article that I missed, so I decided to use the “stops” below to translate a few passages into plainer terms as a self-learning exercise.
Stop 1: "In parallel with the dialectical relation between individual activity and edited setting, we highlight the analogous relation between collective activity and socially produced space" (p. 179).
Translation: We purposefully designed instructional spaces so that individual-s interact within them in "analogous" ways, to highlight how this relationship can be so "analogous"!
Stop 2: "Without questioning the distinctiveness and importance of hand-based tactile, gestural, and inscriptional practices for processes of mathematical thinking and learning, we suggest that fully leveraging the potential of the embodied turn in mathematics education requires an anatomical expansion toward more holistic and encompassing attentiveness to whole bodies - always diversely constituted and abled - and their myriad, heterogeneously organized components, including but not limited to the hands" (p. 180).
Translation: We advocate for "leveraging" the full potential of whole-body embodied movement, without diminishing the value of studies that highlight the significance of tactile, gestural, inscriptional and other forms of limited movements.
Stop 3: "Thus, while, ontologically and epistemologically, we regard all mathematical activity to be inherently embodied and social, not all activity designs leverage the inherently embodied and social nature of mathematical thinking and learning in the same ways" (p. 192).
Translation: Although mathematics is embodied and social by nature in our opinion, it is not always taught in ways that reflect this.
Stop 4: "Bringing this comparison into broader dialog with the field, we suggest that researchers and practitioners attend more closely to the ways in which different patterns of mobilities in mathematical activity might affect the negotiation and development of reconfigured mathematical practices in any instructional design" (p. 193).
Translation: It would be valuable for math researchers and practitioners to attend more closely to the role of movement and its variations in instructional design and learning environments.
Thank you for your honest and carefully thought-through reflection. I appreciated how you translated several passages into plainer language. It made your interpretation very clear and helped me think about what the authors might be claiming beneath the dense terminology.
ReplyDeleteI found myself particularly agreeing with your translations of Stop 3 and Stop 4. I’m learning to think of mathematics as inherently embodied and social, yet I still find myself struggling with how to teach in ways that genuinely reflect that understanding—which may be exactly why we are doing the project we’re doing.
As you noted in Stop 4, I also agree that we need to attend more closely to the role of movement and consider how it might be meaningfully integrated into lessons without compromising conceptual clarity or depth of learning.
Hi Aun, thanks for being so open and honest about your struggles with this paper, and for the work you did translating passages into lighter translations.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the way stop 2 not only discusses the importance of whole-body embodied learning (the purpose of the paper), but also recognizes the inherent value of gestural or smaller types of embodiment or tactile learning. This shows that while they are arguing whole-body embodiment way be best, it isn't always feasible and does not take away the value of other forms.
I also appreciate the way stop 3 recognizes the disparity between the social, embodied nature of mathematics with actual classroom practices. Unfortunately our classroom realities hinder our ability to cater to the "ideals" often proposed in educational literature, and I appreciate the way stop 3 recognizes this.