Math, Multimodality, and Moving Images: The Making of New Educational Chronotopes

• In Event: 64.073 - Exploring Lived Experiences Through Multimodal Texts and Methodologies: Narratives and Complex Representations of Learning

Abstract

Purpose: In mathematics education, most of the data provided by pupils stems from national and international tests, as well as quantitative analysis of large data sets. At the same time there is an interest in talking about mathematics in order to increase students’ understanding and motivation. This talk builds on qualitative studies of social interaction that demonstrate how students talk about solving equations in an assignment were they used their own phones, laptops, and other digital devices to make a multimodal text (a short instructional film).

Framework: Rooted in ethnography and new literacy studies, this study examines the complexity of meaning making across a wide range of literacy and numeracy practices. The analysis pays attention to how young people develop multimodal texts as mediating artefacts in collaborative practices, and use them to negotiate knowledge and literacy. Drawing on video data of social interaction, the boundary objects of the phones provide a lens through which to understand the organization of numeracy and literacy in time and space, what is termed as an educational chronotope (Ritella & Ligorio, 2016). This type of analytical lens allows us to ask and rephrase the question in the communicative model of social semiotics: Who does what kind of (aesthetic and) semiotic work and for whom is the work done? (Kress, 2010, p. 34).

Methods and data
The data in the project stem from a three-year ethnography in four, lower-secondary classrooms, including nearly 100 pupils. The project has university ethics board approval. The data in this presentation is from one of several projects in mathematics education. The unit of analysis is students talk and interaction around the phones while recording their films. A specific focus is on the viewfinder/screen in their mobile phones as boundary objects (Edwards, 2009), and their use of the phone in the boundary-crossing activities in educational chronotopes.

Findings
The findings illustrate how students use the viewfinder when filming, as well as graphics, fonts, and special effects in their editing of multimodal texts in math education. In this way the findings raise questions around agency, authorship and curation when working with digital devices in order to make a multimodal text. The findings in this project illustrate how multimodal texts and methodologies allow for more complex representations of a challenging task in math as a lived experience by producing a multimodal text. In this way when pupils are given the opportunity to work on their own projects, we see that doing so enables them to use skills acquired in learning contexts other than school.

Significance
The findings described in this article can help teachers to understand how students can work with personal digital devices in new and innovative ways, and by that expanding the educational chronotope in and outside of school.

Author

• Øystein Gilje, University of Oslo