Movement in Students’ Mathematical Thinking and Knowing

Increasingly, new conceptualisations of cognition are challenging some long-held assumptions concerning the role of the body and movement in students’ cognition. Research in a variety of fields including neurobiology, cognitive science and mathematics education shows that movement is enmeshed in thinking and knowing. Researchers theorise the body and cognition in different ways, however, and conventional concepts of a disembodied mind often continue to be privileged over movement in cognition. The core provocation for this research, then, is to explore movement in students’ mathematical thinking and knowing. Recently some mathematics education researchers have begun investigating students’ mathematical activities from posthumanist perspectives. In Ingold’s posthumanist theory of making, new things, including knowing, emerge as the flows of dynamic human and nonhuman materials correspond. This thesis further contributes to posthumanist research through analysis of small groups of tertiary education bridging students as they engage with a mathematical prompt. Specifically, this research investigates four aspects of students’ spontaneous movement in their mathematical thinking and knowing: how students mathematically problematise together and over time, how students think mathematically in movement, how students use the dynamic qualities of’ movement in their emerging mathematical thinking and knowing and how new mathematical diagrams emerge from human and nonhuman material flows. Four main findings arise from this research. Students mathematically problematise together along wandering and intertwining pathways towards an ever-changing goal. Rather than movement as an adjunct to thinking or speech, students think mathematically in movement. Laban’s movement elements offer a way to investigate the underexplored dynamic qualities of movement: how it feels to perform and observe movement. Finally, new mathematical diagrams emerge from the correspondence of a variety of material flows and the sociocultural forces in these material flows. Findings from this research contribute to mathematics education in a number of ways: extending the posthumanist theoretical perspective; presenting a researching framework for movement; offering a new conceptualisation of students’ mathematical thinking and knowing in movement; and expanding notions of students problematising. New mathematical things, then, emerge from movement. In research and in the classroom, mathematics education needs to reconsider movement in students’ mathematical thinking and knowing.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Mathematics Education

Grantor dc:publisher

ResearchSpace@Auckland

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Author dc:creator

• Gandell, Robyn

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Longley, Alys
• Yoon, Caroline

Statement dc:rights

• Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2292/64891

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchspace.auckland.ac.nz:2292/64891