Collaborative Action Research on Mathematics and Movement

• In Event: 21.027 - Mathematics Teachers and Researchers Supporting Student Voice in Mathematics: Collaborative Action Research or Allywork?

Abstract

Our project asked the following question: How does movement in mathematics affect 4th grade students’ engagement and learning? This grows out of two concerns: a) students in the school do not get as much movement as they might need because there is pressure to spend more time on content and to improve test scores; and b) the playground equipment in the school is unsafe for students to use. Research on movement and learning shows that cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with academic performance (Santana, et al., 2017). By “engagement,” we mean enjoy, value, see relevance to their lives, and are focused & persistent when doing mathematics (Attard, 2012). We take learning to be related to how students express their mathematics in written and spoken form as well as how they use gestures and their bodies to make sense of mathematical ideas. We drew inspiration from Rosenfeld (2017), who draws on embodied cognition to say that people use their bodies “as a thinking tool.”

Starting in December, we planned activities where students engaged in movement while doing mathematics. In some activities, students predicted and collected data, for example, how many times they could hop on one foot for 15, 30, and 45 seconds and then found the average hops for their small group. Other activities had them, for example, using ropes and their bodies to explore geometric shapes. We took photos and short videos of students doing the activities, photographed their written work and reflections about the activities, and collected the regular worksheets and assessments students did for each unit. Because the students had not done movement activities earlier in the school year, Shelli kept notes about how she saw students engage in the activities. Finally, Beth did focus group interviews with students, asking students what they enjoyed, how they were seeing relevance, etc.

We found that students focused well during the movement activities and were persistent for longer periods of time. They expressed more positive attitudes, confidence, and enjoyment of the mathematics and movement activities. Male students who were previously not willing to participate in classroom mathematics activities, actively participated in the movement-related activities. Scores on the modules and tests were higher in units with movement, for example in Unit 1 (without movement), the mean test score across three assessments on place value was 57%. In Unit 3 (with movement) assessments had a mean score of 80% for multiplication and division and in Unit 4 a mean score of 70% for geometry. For us, this is significant because students had already spent two years learning about place value and the other content was newer for this grade level. In the interviews, all students mentioned without any prompting that math and motion was something they enjoyed. When they talked about the motion math activities, they used precise mathematical vocabulary and said that using their bodies made it easier to then represent their work in drawings and to solve problems. The students said they liked to stand up, exercise, and move around instead of just sitting in their seats.

Authors

• Beth A. Herbel-Eisenmann, Michigan State University

• Mary Q. Foote, Research Foundation, CUNY

• Shelli Burkhardt, Flint Community Schools