Teaching Teachers Teaching Students: How Embodied Cognition Can Help Preservice Teachers Assess Students' Mathematical Thinking

• In Event: The Dynamic Interplay Between Teacher and Student Experiences, Motivational Beliefs, and Achievement

Abstract

K-12 pre-service teachers participated in an online embodied geometric curriculum using a motion-capture video game and design tool, The Hidden Village. Players performed mathematically related body-movements (i.e., directed actions) prior to determining if a given geometric conjecture was either always true or false. After gameplay, groups of participants collaborated to create their own directed actions representative of geometric objects and enactive of transformations. Combined, the gameplay and design activities allowed researchers to investigate how an embodied curriculum for teacher training could impact teachers’ awareness of how gestures and movements can facilitate thinking mathematically, for both their students and themselves as a means of formative assessment practices.

Authors

• Hanall Sung, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Michael I. Swart, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Mitchell J. Nathan, University of Wisconsin - Madison