Abstract
This paper examines mathematical meaning-making from a phenomenological perspective and considers how a specific dynamic digital tool can prompt students to disclose the relationships between a function and its antiderivatives. Drawing on case study methodology, we focus on a pair of grade 11 students and analyze how the tool’s affordances and the students’ engagement in the interrogative processes of sequential questioning and answering allow them to make sense of the mathematical objects and their relationships and, lastly, of the mathematical activity in which they are engaged. A three-layer model of meaning of the students’ disclosure process emerges, namely, (a) disclosing objects, (b) disclosing relationships, and (c) disclosing functional relationships. The model sheds light on how the students’ interrogative processes help them make sense of mathematical concepts as they work on tasks with a digital tool, an issue that has rarely been explored. The study’s implications and limitations are discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
They had already encountered the integral symbol and its computational uses in their physics and electronics lessons, however. The integral in such cases had the meaning of an area (definite integral). Nonetheless, they had not been exposed to the fundamental theorem of calculus, which links the two meanings.
References
Arzarello, F. (2019). La covariación instrumentada: un fenómeno de mediación semiótica y epistemológica. Instrumented covariation: A phenomenon of semiotic and epistemological mediation. Proceeding of the XV CIAEM, Conferencia Interamericana de Educación Matemática (Plenary Lecture). Medellin, Colombia.
Arzarello, F., & Robutti, O. (2010). Multimodality in multi-representational environments. ZDM-The International Journal on Mathematics Education, 42(7), 715–731.
Arzarello, F., Paola, D., Robutti, O., & Sabena, C. (2009). Gestures as semiotic resources in the mathematics classroom. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 70(2), 97–109.
Arzarello, F., Ascari, M., Baldovino, C., & Sabena, C. (2011). The teacher’s activity under a phenomenological lens. In U. Behiye (Ed.), Proceedings of the 35th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (vol. 2, pp. 49–56). Ankara, Turkey: PME.
Bartolini Bussi, M.G. & Mariotti, M.A. (2008). Semiotic mediation in the mathematical classroom. Artefacts and signs after a Vygotskian perspective. In L. English, (Ed.), Handbook of international research in mathematics education 2nd revised ed., pp. 746-783. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Boaler, J., & Humphreys, C. (2005). Connecting mathematical ideas: Middle school video cases to support teaching and learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Cai, J. (Ed.). (2017). Compendium of Research in Mathematics Education. Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
Chen, C. L., & Herbst, P. (2013). The interplay among gestures, discourse, and diagrams in students' geometrical reasoning. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 83(2), 285–307.
Correa, J., Nunes, T., & Bryant, P. (1998). Young children's understanding of division: The relationship between division terms in a noncomputational task. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(2), 321–329.
de Finetti, B. (1967). Il "saper vedere" in matematica [The art of seeing in mathematics]. Torino, Italy: Loescher.
Drijvers, P. (2015). Digital technology in mathematics education: Why it works (or doesn’t). In S. J. Cho (Ed.), Selected Regular Lectures from the 12th International Congress on Mathematical Education (pp. 135–151). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Hintikka, J. (1999). The role of logic in argumentation. In J. Hintikka (Ed.), Inquiry as inquiry: A logic of scientific discovery (pp. 25–46). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer.
Mason, J. (2008). Being mathematical with & in front of learners: Attention, awareness, and attitude as sources of differences between teacher educators, teachers & learners. In T. Wood & B. Jaworski (Eds.), International handbook of mathematics teacher education (vol. 4, pp. 31–56). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Mason, J. (2014). Questioning in mathematics education. In S. Lerman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of mathematics education (pp. 513–518). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer.
Radford, L. (2008). The ethics of being and knowing: Towards a cultural theory of learning. In L. Radford, G. Schubring, & F. Seeger (Eds.), Semiotics in mathematics education: Epistemology, history, classroom, and culture (pp. 215–234). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Radford, L. (2010). The eye as a theoretician: seeing structures in generalizing activities. For the Learning of Mathematics, 30(2), 2–7.
Rota, G. C. (1991). The end of objectivity: A series of lectures delivered at M.I.T in October, 1973. Oxford, England: TRUEXpress.
Schwartz, J., & Yerushalmy, M. (1995). On the need for a bridging language for mathematical modeling. For the Learning of Mathematics, 15(2), 29–35.
Shternberg, B., Yerushalmy, M., & Zilber, A. (2004). The calculus integral sketcher [Computer software]. Tel-Aviv, Israel: Center of Educational Technology.
Swidan, O., & Yerushalmy, M. (2014). Learning the indefinite integral in a dynamic and interactive technological environment. ZDM-The International Journal on Mathematics Education, 46(4), 517–531.
Swidan, O., & Yerushalmy, M. (2016). Conceptual structure of the accumulation function in an interactive and multiple-linked representational environment. International Journal of Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education, 2(1), 30–58.
Tall, D. (2010). A sensible approach to the calculus. http://homepages.warwick.ac.uk/staff/David.Tall/pdfs/dot2010a-sensible-calculus.pdf. Accessed 12 June 2019.
Thompson, P. W., & Carlson, M. P. (2017). Variation, covariation, and functions: Foundational ways of thinking mathematically. In Compendium of Research in Mathematics Education (pp. 421–456). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
Weiland, I. S., Hudson, R. A., & Amador, J. M. (2014). Preservice formative assessment interviews: The development of competent questioning. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 12(2), 329–352.
Yerushalmy, M., & Chazan, D. (2008). Technology and curriculum design: The ordering of discontinuities in school algebra. In L. English (Ed.), Handbook of international research in mathematics education (2nd ed.pp. 806–837). New York, NY: Routledge.
Yoon, C., Thomas, M. O. J., & Dreyfus, T. (2011). Grounded blends and mathematical gesture spaces: developing mathematical understandings via gestures. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 78(3), 371–393.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Swidan, O., Sabena, C. & Arzarello, F. Disclosure of mathematical relationships with a digital tool: a three layer-model of meaning. Educ Stud Math 103, 83–101 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-019-09926-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-019-09926-2