Locking-It-In and Doubling: Mediating Second-Grade Students’ Activity With Multiplicative Thinking

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 1:30 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: (Re)Mediation in Social Interaction (Table 9)

Abstract

Using activity theory as a lens, we aimed to understand what second-grade students’ interactions revealed about their thinking and what mediated students’ engagement with important multiplicative ideas. In this setting, students interacted with multiplicative thinking using a coding robot and other artifacts as mediating tools. Through qualitative analysis, we found that students interacted with three concepts related to multiplicative thinking (i.e., composite units, doubling, iterating), and the lead mediators in their interactions included the robot’s remote, dry erase marker and table, and peers/teacher. Students gravitated to artifacts that made sense to them, and the implication is that students need agency in opportunities to use artifacts and have interactions with rules and the community to make meaning of complex mathematical ideas.

Authors

• Jessica F. Shumway, Utah State University

• Camille Lund, Utah State University

• Joseph S. Kozlowski, Utah State University

• Deborah Silvis, SUNY - College at Cortland

• Jody E. Clarke-Midura, Utah State University

• Anahita Ashineh, Utah State University