A joint project of design-based educational researchers, mechatronic engineers, and digital accessibility experts has created a new genre of pedagogical technologies — hybrid material–digital multimodal artifacts for collaborative learning of sensorily diverse students in inclusive classrooms. Here we present the Quad, a manipulable quadrilateral hand-held object that is linked in real time to its digital screen-based simulation, whose own transformation, in turn, activates content-oriented voice description and output sonification. Pilot studies with blind and visually-impaired student-participants suggest the Quad’s potential in grounding geometric reasoning, insight, and generalization in exploratory haptic–proprioceptive investigation. In its conception and development, the Quad exemplifies the ethical, philosophical, and theoretical perspectives of its collaborating designers respecting all children’s universal right to access and participate in cultural practices, including techno–scientific activities. As researchers, we harness technological innovations to realize moral obligations and, through that, to promote the study of human perception, action, and cognition. We look forward to mutual growth of our research program along with parallel efforts advancing an Italian project to promote teachers’ pre-service training and professional development surrounding implications of the embodiment turn in the cognitive sciences for school-based instructional practice.
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Embodied Participation: (re)Situating Bodies in Collaborative Research
Our paper centers embodiment as a theme and a process in research through describing the fine-grained practices and everyday interactions that shape collaborative research in the contexts of watershed restoration and environmental monitoring. We focus on embodiment because it offers a means for attending to the process and politics of knowledge production within and across boundaries. We offer two case studies that focus on embodiment to structure research processes and shape ongoing, emergent, and collaborative research practices. We argue technical communication as a field is well positioned to include embodied practices in research design and writing.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1849227
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10403967
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Communication Design Quarterly
- Volume:
- 10
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 2166-1642
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 27 to 39
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3531210.3531213
