Enactivist Symbol Grounding:  From Attentional Anchors to Mathematical Discourse (Abrahamson)

Dor Abrahamson , Faculty of Education, UC-Berkeley, 26-Oct 2023

VIDEO

ABSTRACT: According to the embodiment hypothesis knowledge is the capacity for perceptuomotor enactment, situated in the world as much as in the body: a way of engaging the environment in anticipation of accomplishing interactions. What does this mean for educational practice? What is the embodiment or enactment of abstract ideas, like justice, photosynthesis, or algebra? What is the teacher’s role in embodied designs for learning? I will describe my lab’s educational design-based collaborative research on mathematical learning, and how we came to view in the analysis and promotion of content learning. I will describe how students spontaneously generate perceptual solutions to motor-control problems. These then become verbal through adopting symbolic artifacts provided by the teacher. This approach can also help students with diverse sensorimotor capacities.

Dor Abrahamson is Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California Berkeley, where he established the Embodied Design Research Laboratory devoted to pedagogical technologies for teaching and learning mathematics. He is particularly interested in relations between learning to move in new ways and learning mathematicaal concepts. His research draws on embodied cognition, dynamic systems theory, and sociocultural theory. 

Abrahamson, D., & Sánchez-García, R. (2016). Learning is moving in new ways: The ecological dynamics of mathematics education. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 25(2), 203-239.  

Abrahamson, D. (2021). Grasp actually: An evolutionist argument for enactivist mathematics education. Human Development, 65(2), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1159/000515680

Shvarts, A., & Abrahamson, D. (2023). Coordination dynamics of semiotic mediation: A functional dynamic systems perspective on mathematics teaching/learning. In T. Veloz, R. Videla, & A. Riegler (Eds.), Education in the 21st century [Special issue]. Constructivist Foundations, 18(2), 220–234. https://constructivist.info/18/2