“This is the size of one meter”: Children’s bodily-material collaboration

Abstract

In CSCL studies, language is often foregrounded as the primary resource for engaging in collaborative learning, while the body is more often positioned as a secondary resource. There is, however, a growing interest in the body as a resource in learning and collaboration in and outside CSCL. In this paper, we present, analyse, and discuss how two nine-year-old children collaborate through gesturing and moving their bodies around a touchscreen. The pair is working with the concept of scale and area measurement and are in midst of copying their rooms from paper to touchscreen. During this process, the pair engages in a discussion regarding the size of one meter through language, gestures and manipulation of the material resources. The analysis shows two distinct ways of understanding the length of one meter, which primarily are visible through the children's gestures and bodily movements. In the analysis we show how the children dynamically produce bodymaterial resources for communicative and illustrative purposes; moreover, they use body-material resources as a cognitive tool and as a way of shepherding each other. The study forms part of a body of studies analysing and theorizing the body in education, learning, and interaction. We discuss the wider impact of our findings and argue how they may challenge and improve studies relying mainly on a coding and counting approach or automated capture of e.g. gestures. In addition, we provide a detailed multimodal representation of the subtle bodily-material resources, which we argue is a modest contribution to a catalogue of ways of representing and making bodily-material resources visible in CSCL research. Keywordsbodily-material resources for learning * embodied meaning-making practices * touchscreens * video analysis * concept of scale "When the proportions of architectural composition are applied to a particular building, the two-termed relationship of the parts to the whole must be harmonized with a third term-the observer. He not only sees the proportions of a door and their relationship to those of a wall (as he would in a drawing of the building), but he measures them against his own dimensions. This threetermed relationship is called scale." (Britannica Online Encyclopedia, 2014).

Future direction for the CSCL field: Methodologies and eight controversies

“…Today, new methods are emerging, such as automatic analysis (forms of learning analytics) (Berland et al 2015) and new ways of connecting actions, conversations, and gestures that form part of participants' meaning-making processes. Interaction analysis (Jordan and Henderson 1995) has been an important methodology for many CSCL researchers over the last 20 years (Furberg 2016), which has been extended with the inclusion of gestures and the body (Davidsen and Ryberg 2017;Enyedy et al 2015). In their paper, Ben Rydal Shapiro, Rogers P. Hall, and David A. Owens extend the focus by including physical movements in their analysis.…”

Opportunities and Challenges of Bodily Interaction for Geometry Learning to Inform Technology Design

“…Ma highlights ways in which the 'body' serves a dual purpose: one in representational meaning that is externally visible and accessible to others (e.g., an angle), supporting communication and negotiation of mathematical ideas, and one that is a contribution to the phenomena being explored (e.g., triangle/shape), where students' own bodies became mathematical objects (e.g., vertices of a triangle). In the context of measurement, Davidson & Ryberg [19] also identify the bodily-material resources as a communicative and illustrative resource for showing each other their understandings and instructing each other, as well as a cognitive auxiliary tool scaffolding knowledge building.…”

“…Davidsen & Ryberg [19] also highlight the importance of paying attention to bodily action/interaction in gaining insight into how children's understanding of scale is anchored in their bodily-material resources. By taking this approach, we aim to gain insight into the role of the body in expression and in communication, and the degree to which it supports enactment of shape and angles.…”

Embodied Perspectives on Behavioral Cognitive Enhancement

“…Bodilymaterial resources include gestures, touch, body positions and movements, and have been found to play a crucial role not only for communicative and illustrative purposes, but importantly also as cognitive auxiliary tools, for instance in finger-counting (Fischer & Brugger, 2011) and in concretizing concepts into flexible, short-lived semiotic resources, such as counting by nodding or moving the hands while reasoning (Carlson, Avraamides, Cary, & Strasberg, 2007). Bodily-material resources are also thought to play a role in shepherding and instructing peers, in a way that often complements language in a multimodal utterance (Davidsen & Ryberg, 2017).…”

“…investigated the general observation that learners are often found to spontaneously use their bodies as cognitive tools to learn and illustrate old and novel concepts (e.g.,Davidsen & Ryberg, 2017;Eskildsen & Wagner, 2015).…”