Spatial skills are consistently linked to mathematical reasoning, and are sensitive to intervention. One important spatial skill is spatial scaling. We evaluated whether (1) a playful scaling game might promote learning by providing feedback during play, and (2) spatial scaling is related to number‐line estimation (NLE) based on the mutual reliance on relative magnitude reasoning. Forty‐eight children, ages 5.5–8.3, completed a playful scaling game and a NLE task. Results show that children improve from the first to second half of the task, especially for more difficult trials and for the lowest performing children. In addition, scaling and NLE relate when controlling for age and vocabulary. Similar improvement on the task and relations to NLE were observed in a conceptual replication (
- Award ID(s):
- 1822865
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10170333
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Computersupported collaborative learning
- Volume:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 1573-4552
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 709-712
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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ABSTRACT N = 52). These results provide support for further study of improving spatial scaling in children, with the possibility to test whether scaling could support related mathematical skills as well. -
Embodied Interaction (EI) offers unique opportunities to uncover novel ways to achieve experiential learning whilst keeping students stimulated and engaged. Spatial abilities have been repeatedly demonstrated as a success predictor for educations and professions in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. However, many researchers argue that training and assessment of this pertinent reasoning skill is vastly underrepresented in the school curriculum. This paper presents TetRotation, a PhD centred on how affordances coming from Multimodal Analytics can be coupled with EI to nurture Mental Rotation (MR) skills. The overarching objectives of the project are two fold. First, the TetRotation Interaction Design study will highlight best practices identified through the assessment of efficiency, level of engagement and learning gains achieved when using gesture based EI to solve MR tasks. Next, in the TetRotation Game study, these design practices will guide the implementation of an interactive serious game purposed to support the development of MR skills. This research relies on mixed method techniques, including data collections from users' actions, like motion sensing, EEG, gaze tracking, video-recordings, click streams, interviews and surveys.more » « less
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Abstract Background This paper contributes to current discussions about supporting prospective teachers (PSTs) in developing skills of noticing students’ mathematical thinking. We draw attention to PSTs’ initial noticing skills (prior to instruction focused on supporting noticing) as PSTs engage in analyzing written artifacts of student work and video-records. We examined and compared PSTs’ noticing skills as they analyzed how students reason about, generalize, and justify generalizations of figural patterns given student written work and video records. We identified aspects of student thinking about generalizations and justifications, which PSTs addressed and interpreted. We also examined how PSTs respond to students as they analyze student thinking given written artifacts of student work or video-records of small group discussions, and we identified the foci of PSTs’ responding practice.
Results Our data revealed that PSTs’ initial noticing skills of student generalizations and justifications differed while accounting for ways in which student thinking was externalized (written work or video-records). PSTs’ attending-
and -interpreting and their responding practices were focused on mathematically significant aspects of student thinking to a greater extent in the context of analyzing written artifacts compared to video records. While analyzing students’ written work, PSTs demonstrated greater attention to ways in which students analyzed patterns, students’ generalization strategies, and justifications linked to an understanding of the pattern structure, compared to analyzing student thinking captured via videos.Conclusion Our results document that without providing any intentional support for PSTs’ noticing skills, PSTs are more deliberate to focus on mathematically significant aspects of student thinking while analyzing written artifacts of student work compared to video-records. We believe that the analysis of student written work might demand from PSTs to be more analytical. While examining written representations, PSTs have to reconstruct students’ reasoning. Unlike the videos where the students tell or use gestures to express their thinking, written work provides fewer clues about student thinking. Thus, written work demands a deeper level of engagement from PSTs as they strive to understand student reasoning. Our study extends research on PSTs’ noticing skills by documenting differences in PSTs’ noticing in relation to the nature of artifacts of student work that PSTs analyze. Our work also adds to prior research on PSTs’ noticing by characterizing specific aspects of students’ thinking about pattern generalizations and justifications that PSTs address as they analyze student thinking and respond to students.
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