0000000000384120
AUTHOR
Peter Frejd
Grade 8 students appropriating Sankey diagrams: The first cycle in an educational design research
Many students do not experience usefulness in mathematics. To address this problem, we offered them a mathematical tool, Sankey diagrams, which is a flow chart appearing in news media to visualize social, industrial or environmental processes. We carried out an Educational Design Research (EDR) to develop and evaluate lesson materials about contextualized Sankey diagrams. We tested these materials with a class of grade 8 students and evaluated these on the feasibility of students’ appropriation of the diagrams. In the lesson, we observed how students were able to read the Sankey diagrams, liked the societal processes visualized, yet did not fully grasp their mathematical properties. However…
A commentary on the Special Issue “Innovations in measuring and fostering mathematical modelling competencies”
This is a commentary on the ESM 2021 Special Issue on Innovations in Measuring and Fostering Mathematical Modelling Competencies. We have grouped the ten studies into three themes: competencies, fostering, and measuring. The first theme and the papers therein provide a platform to discuss the cognitivist backgrounds to the different conceptualizations of mathematical modelling competencies, based on the modelling cycle. We suggest theoretical widening through a competence continuum and enriching of the modelling cycle with overarching, analytic dimensions for creativity, tool use, metacognition, and so forth. The second theme and the papers therein showcase innovative ideas on fostering an…
Connections of Science Capital and the Teaching and Learning of Mathematical Modelling: An Introduction
This chapter is an introduction to the theoretical concept of science capital. It also serves as an introduction to the next three chapters of this book. These ensuing chapters all connect mathematical modelling education to science capital. In short, science capital is a set of resources that offer people advantages within scientific contexts. For example, a friend who works in research can be a resource to better understand the gist of science. Not all people have such friends, and the underlying sociological theory of Bourdieu explains how inequities are caused by some people having better access to science capital than others. In this chapter, we explain how the concept of science capit…
The object-tool duality in mathematical modelling. A framework to analyze students’ appropriation of Sankey diagrams to model dynamic processes
Students often do not experience the relevance of learning mathematics. This paper reports on an exploratory case study, in which a class of grade 8 students (n=35) was introduced to Sankey diagrams. The aim was to explore to what extent these students could appropriate Sankey diagrams, meaning: they could describe these as objects in themselves and they could use them to model and visualize phenomena relevant to them. Based on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, we developed an analytical construct defined as the object-tool duality, coordinating mathematics as a set of objects and as a set of tools. The analysis of students’ answers showed that they could use these diagrams as tools to v…