Abstract
Our research on mathematics pedagogy is grounded in the enactivist view of cognition as sensorimotor activity. We say, “Learning is moving in new ways” — understanding a concept begins by developing a new environmentally coupled kinesthetic coordination. Yet, accomplishing this coordination is predicated on composing a new perceptual structure, which we call an attentional anchor. In turn, this attentional anchor rises to consciousness as the concept in question. I will share eye-tracking data analyses from our international collaborative project, focusing on the emergence of attentional anchors facilitating the enactment of bimanual proportional movement.
Bio
Dor Abrahamson (PhD, Learning Sciences) is Professor of Cognition and Development at the Graduate School of Education, University of California Berkeley, where he runs the Embodied Design Research Laboratory (https://edrl.berkeley.edu). A design-based researcher of mathematics cognition, teaching, and learning, Abrahamson develops and evaluates theoretical models of conceptual learning by analyzing empirical data collected during technological implementations of his innovative pedagogical design. Abrahamson and collaborators use multimodal analytic methodologies to investigate the emergence of mathematical concepts from perceptual forms that facilitate sensorimotor coordination. Drawing on enactivist philosophy, dynamic systems theory, and sociocultural views, Abrahamson theorizes conceptual learning as students’ guided reconciliation of perceptually immediate and culturally mediated constructions of situated phenomena.