Beyond "Just Sitting There": Function Addition Through Collaborative Balance Sensory Activity With Balance Board Math (Poster 23)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Thirteen
  In Poster Session: Learning Sciences SIG Poster Session One: Games, Embodiment, Design, and Computational Thinking

Abstract

Sedentary classroom norms are challenged by both theories of embodied cognition, whereby bodily experiences impact cognitive structures, and of sensory regulation, whereby bodily activity provides sensory input that supports self-regulation. Balance Board Math, a design-based research project, envisions learning as both movement-based and sensory-regulatory, focusing on the under-activated sense of balance. We evaluated high school students' learning through function addition activities using a sensor-equipped balance board with regards to learning outcomes and pathways and enjoyment/arousal levels. Our findings bear out embodied cognition and sensory regulation perspectives in that students developed news sensorimotor schemes integrating their balance experiences with features of the graphs they generated, yielding both high levels of excitement and improved posttest math scores.

Authors

• Sofia Tancredi, University of California - Berkeley
  Presenting Author

• Helen Tong Li, University of California - Berkeley
  Presenting Author

• Julia Xiaofang Wang, University of California - Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cecelia Liu, University of California - Berkeley
  Presenting Author

• Johnny Steven Serrano Rodriguez, University of California - Berkeley
  Presenting Author

• Genevieve Lynn Macfarlan, University of California - Berkeley
  Presenting Author