Angle as a Dynamic Concept in a Fourth-Grade Classroom: A New Materialism Analysis

• In Event: Hilton Roundtable Session 18
  In Roundtable Session: Pre-K and Elementary Students' Mathematical Reasoning Processes

Abstract

Drawing on a new materialism framework, this analyzes decenters human actors in the study of mathematical activity. I describe how the protractor, a group of fourth-graders, a teacher and a researcher formed an entanglement that provoked dynamic concepts of angles and angle measurement. The new materialist interpretation suggests that multiple and unfinished concepts of angles and angle measuring tools emerged. Specifically, these entanglements acted as creative forces that engendered particular concepts such as angles as wedges and angle as rotation, as well as protractors and an alternative, student-generated imagined angle-measuring tool reminiscent of a goniometer. This interpretation draws attention to considerations of the concepts that may emerge in mathematical activity when taken for granted tools are questioned and problematized.

Author

• José Martínez Hinestroza, Texas State University