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This article examines how fiber crafting as a category of activity can develop mathematics learning and the conditions under which various fiber crafting traditions differentially cultivate mathematical understanding. Modifying the constructionist paradigm with relational materialist principles, this paper advances the notion of “materialized action,” which describes the natural inquiry process that results through emergent patterns between learners and the materialized traces of their actions. This paper takes a qualitative approach, combining a design and intervention phase to look closely across a set of materials (i.e., three fiber crafts, knitting, crochet, and pleating) and engagement in a “powerful idea” (i.e., the role of unitizing in multiplicative proportional reasoning), as instantiated across three youth case studies, and as an illustration of how we can better understand micro-developmental learning processes. We identified three levels of unitizing that make up the larger idea of enacting proportional reasoning (PR) through materialized action, which build and catalyze toward one another and support emergent understanding of PR from the intra-action of the material and the learner. In their engagement with PR, youth employed different strategies based on personal choice, affordances of the materials, and practices of the crafting traditions. Materialized actions as a theoretical advancement has the potential to reformulate what counts as mathematics and can guide the design of mathematics learning that is embracing (rather than reducing) worldly concreteness in learning key domain ideas, with implications for the design of more equitable learning environments. 

This article challenges an over‐reliance on language as the primary means to communicate knowledge by adopting a languagelessness approach to maker pedagogies and maker literacies. Having conducted makerspace and design‐based research for some time, we separately and together noticed a productive relationship between wordless relational makerspace and making moments focused on craft, tools, technologies, and materials, and ways that an absence of verbal and written communication opens possibilities within learning environments. After meetings and discussions, we co‐wrote the article to examine ways that language‐light, even language‐free pedagogical spaces allow for a different quality of design work that motivates and fosters innovation. There are three international research projects that serve as research vignettes to investigate the efficacy of languagelessness. The theory foregrounded to anchor and interpret the three vignettes draws from maker literacies research and sociomaterial orientations to knowledge development. 

With increasing understanding of the inextricable connections between learners and the tools that facilitate their learning within complex social systems, new theoretical and methodological developments have emerged to allow us to explore the materiality in learning environments. Sociomateriality (Fenwick, 2015) urges us to consider the interdependence of social and material elements in learning. Rather than viewing classroom spaces and educational tools as static, inert material objects, sociomateriality posits them as capable of exerting force by the way they are acted on or by. This approach has the potential to help respond to the global crises by interrogating and recoupling learning and knowledge with networks and the power relationships inherent in all learning. To this end, this symposium aims to bring researchers together around a common theme of unpacking how sociomateriality might be used as a theoretical foundation or analytical approach for Learning Sciences research. 

This article examines how fiber crafting can develop mathematics learning and learners. Extending the constructionist paradigm with relational materialist principles, this paper advances the notion of “materialized action,” which describes the natural inquiry process that results through emergent patterns between learners and the materialized traces of their actions. This paper takes a qualitative approach, combining a design and intervention phase examine fiber crafts (here knitting) and engagement in a “powerful idea” (i.e., unitizing in multiplicative proportional reasoning) as an illustration of how we can better understand micro-developmental learning processes, and advance constructionist theory. 

There is tremendous excitement around makerspaces for deepening and enriching curricula across subjects, as well as engaging traditionally marginalized learners in new ways. To address the lack of translation of maker education projects to mathematics learning, we propose that educators aspire to create a “Mathland” when designing maker educational activities. Mathlands are environments envisioned by Seymour Papert where mathematics are learned alongside ways of doing mathematics in self-selected contexts, leading to an epistemology and natural language of mathematics that pervades all experiences. To imagine a Mathland where women’s participation in mathematics is lifelong and lifewide, we explore traditionally female-dominated fiber crafts where long-term engagement, mathematics, and heritage intersect. As part of a longitudinal embedded multi-year ethnographic study, we conducted cohort analyses as well as grounded, iterative, and thematic coding of semi-structured interview data, augmented with crafting artifacts from 65 adult fiber crafters. Using qualitative analytical techniques, we asked: How does math occur in craft? How do crafters observe the intersection between math and craft in process? Fiber crafts were found to present a “Mathland,” a lifelong context for immersive math engagement. We present crafters’ math insights in the craft, as well as multiple aspects of the crafts and surrounding communities that supported the crafters in sustaining their engagement with mathematics throughout their lifetime. This study has implications for the design of inclusive and lifelong maker educational environments for mathematics learning. 

Purpose This paper aims to explore what design aspects can support data visualization literacy within science museums. Design/methodology/approach The qualitative study thematically analyzes video data of 11 visitor groups as they engage with reading and writing of data visualization through a science museum exhibition that features real-time and uncurated data. Findings Findings present how the design aspects of the exhibit led to identifying single data records, data patterns, mismeasurements and distribution rate. Research limitations/implications The findings preface how to study data visualization literacy learning in short museum interactions. Practical implications Practically, the findings point toward design implications for facilitating data visualization literacy in museum exhibits. Originality/value The originality of the study lays in the way the exhibit supports engagement with data visualization literacy with uncurated data records.