Rhythm: Exploring the Movement of Thinking-Being in a Child's Engagement With Arithmetic Dice

• In Event: Expansion(s): Critical and Relational Pedagogies in Classrooms

Abstract

This article investigates the movement of thinking-being in a 7-year-old child’s engagement with arithmetic dice. To do so, it explores the emergence of his off-task behavior, involving material, discursive and mathematical practices. Unlike previous studies, setting up categories of on-and-off task behavior, this study uses rhythm to illustrate the continuum of on/off-task behaviors in the complexity of the child’s relation to the arithmetic dice. It especially destabilizes the unitary and fixed concept of being a mathematical learner with an exploration into the movement of thinking-being as distributed forces. This shift opens up space to reconsider mathematical teaching and learning that involves uncertainty, unpredictability, and even unanswerability, rather than specific knowledge and fixed schemas.

Author

• Lin Chen