New materialist ontologies in mathematics education: the body in/of mathematics

Freitas, Elizabeth de; Sinclair, Nathalie

doi:10.1007/s10649-012-9465-z

Cited by 97 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…2 Exploring the possibility of sound as method/ology implicates the body differently than visuals/ texts, raising different questions and opening possibilities for engaging old conversations differently. Although senseembodied research has been undervalued, understudied, and under-applied in education and social research (Gershon, 2011a), it is arguably central to emerging interstices of STEM, arts/aesthetics (STEAM), 3 big data, and onto-epistemological trends, such as returns to ontology and new materialism (de Freitas & Sinclair, 2013), in qualitative inquiry.…”

Section: Sound: a Sense-embodied Methods/ologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Ocular Inquiry

Daza

Gershon

2015

Qualitative Inquiry

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To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Qualitative Inquiry (QI), we write about the ongoing hegemony of the ocular in research and toward a more multisensory, and aural, embodied inquiry. Sonic inquiry is attention and intention as meta/physical and socially embodied processes without ignoring the body or separating the mind from body or material-physical and social worlds. This article is about acknowledging that sounds and silences have always shaped (research/er) possibilities, as well as what hearing research futures might offer.

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Section: Sound: a Sense-embodied Methods/ologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Ocular Inquiry

Daza

Gershon

2015

Qualitative Inquiry

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“…They participate in agential relationships with the user so that the user and the artefact mutually constitute each other through interaction (de Freitas & Sinclair, 2013). This post-humanist understanding of agency implies that subjects are constituted as dynamic assemblages and that the mathematical subject comes into being through these material and social encounters.…”

Section: Distributing Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Agency and assemblage in pattern generalisation: a materialist approach to learning

Ferrara¹,

Ferrari²

2016

Educ Stud Math

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In this paper, we draw on the contemporary perspective of inclusive materialism offered by de Freitas and Sinclair to contribute to current discussions on the role of the body in the learning of mathematics. Using the notions of distributed agency and assemblage, we illustrate the way in which three students engage with a patterning task. We discuss this as an example to show how the mathematics activity involves, besides the students' bodies, other materialities that populate the classroom, and how all the human and non-human bodies form a moving assemblage that constantly reconfigures and reorients learning. The inclusive materialism helps us talk about learning as a dynamic assemblage rather than in terms of individual achievements and directs attention to the material learning environment.Taking the new materialist perspective proposed by de Freitas and Sinclair (2014), this article contributes to current discussions on the role of the body in learning mathematics. The inclusive materialism of de Freitas and Sinclair offers a new way of theorising the nature of embodiment and embodied mathematics, moving away from essentialised views of the body Band towards a more temporal and contingent sense of becoming^(p. 47). It suggests that we must Btalk about the 'perceptuo-motor possibilities' of the body while also addressing the social entanglement of bodies^, as well as address Bthe way meaning and matter are entangled^(p. 22). De Freitas and Sinclair propose to focus less on human will and intention and more on distributed agency, so that the human body is not conceived as the principal administrator of its own participation or the only centre of activity. Decentralising agency allows us to shift attention to how the material conditions of the classroom partake in mathematical thinking and learning. This approach questions the acquisitionist view that learning occurs through mental schemas or mechanisms that students are expected to acquire, Educ Stud Math (2017) 94:21-36

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“…More specifically, we adopt an inclusive materialist approach in which the tool (in this case, TouchCounts) is seen as participating in an agential relationship with the user so that the tool and the user mutually constitute each other through interaction (de Freitas & Sinclair, 2013). In so far as the tool 'speaks' (and on occasion moves things) in interaction with the user, it takes on an animate role in the interaction, enabling but also preventing activity.…”

Section: Theoretical Framingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mathematics using multiple senses: Developing finger gnosis with three- and four-year-olds in an era of multi-touch technologies

Sinclair¹,

Pimm²

2015

Pac Early Child Educ Res Assoc

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In this paper, we explore a richer sense of finger gnosis (finger knowledge) with respect to three-and four-year-olds' interactions with a novel iPad application (TouchCounts), focusing on their responses to an "inverse subitising" task. The direct and tactile nature of their engagement with TouchCounts leads to a striking shift from incrementing using the index finger to deployment of several fingers all-at-once (in a cardinal touch gesture) to achieve a given target number that is then spoken by the iPad. This form of finger representation differs from the more ordinally-based differentiation of fingers that is discussed in the psychology literature.

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New materialist ontologies in mathematics education: the body in/of mathematics

Cited by 97 publications

References 16 publications

Beyond Ocular Inquiry

Beyond Ocular Inquiry

Agency and assemblage in pattern generalisation: a materialist approach to learning

Mathematics using multiple senses: Developing finger gnosis with three- and four-year-olds in an era of multi-touch technologies

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