What is it about?
This study describes the feasibility of designing and fostering pre-service teacher inquiry at the intersection of community and disciplinary engagement. Mapping My Math (MMM), a game-based and mobile learning activity, guided pre-service teachers in playfully exploring mathematics featured in the everyday activities of people and places and creatively representing this inquiry with digital media. This study draws from design-based research that examined the role of place, digital media and mobility in mathematics teacher education. Design narrative methods describe how MMM was created, implemented and refined to support disciplinary inquiry across settings given the evolution of tools, activities and practices. The study and design narrative address the following question: How can game-based and mobile learning be designed to support pre-service teachers’ disciplinary inquiry of everyday mathematics? Findings shared in this study’s design narrative attend to the quality of pre-service teachers’ inquiry-as-play, or expressive mobility situated among learners’ social and material relations, disciplinary concepts and the built environment. Implications from this study concern the role of mobile learning in mathematics teacher education to connect school, community and online settings; the potential of gameful design to impact pre-service teacher learning across settings; and the importance of fostering disciplinary inquiry whereby pre-service teachers can “navigate” their own learning. Originality/value – Game-based and mobile learning designs, like MMM, can create the conditions for cross-setting mobility as generative of inquiry-as-play in mathematics teacher education. MMM encouraged pre-service teachers to playfully leverage disciplinary practices that shaped new relationships with mathematics, their city and the mathematics of place and community.
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Why is it important?
Game-based and mobile learning activities like Mapping My Math (MMM) can afford pre-service teachers the freedom to play and navigate their own learning within disciplinary and everyday structures. This case study demonstrates how MMM created the conditions for cross-setting mobility – of people across places, of information and media across networks, of concepts across contexts – as generative of opportunities for inquiry-as-play in mathematics teacher education.
Perspectives
Jeremiah (Remi) Holden is a teacher educator and learning scientist whose interests and design-based research concerns educator learning across settings, the design and play of games, and mobile learning. Learn more about Remi at www.remiholden.com, and follow him via Twitter at @remiholden.
Dr Jeremiah H Kalir
University of Colorado Denver
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Mobile inquiry-as-play in mathematics teacher education, On the Horizon The International Journal of Learning Futures, February 2016, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/oth-08-2015-0046.
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Resources
How can teachers use videogames to teach their students mathematics?
Imagine a veteran mathematics educator eager to refine her practice. Alternatively, what of the first-year teacher confident in her ability to adapt new technologies to communicate, problem-solve, and share information. How might either identify what makes video games and gameplay effective in a mathematics classroom? What are the advantages of game-based learning in contrast to more traditional instructional strategies, and can pitfalls be avoided, successes recognized, and challenges mitigated?
Place-based design education: A pedagogy for classroom and community-based civic participation
Over the past three years we have partnered with a group of teachers, educational researchers, and community members to collaboratively teach a place– based high school course called People, Places, and Stories (PPS). One of the key goals of PPS is to engage students in identifying and researching cultural and ecological themes and issues in their local community, then designing media and events (e.g., documentaries, photo exhibits, games, community events, and digital stories) to share their findings and personal perspectives on these issues. In recent implementations of PPS, mobile technologies have emerged as key tools for supporting students’ fieldwork and shaping the media products and experiences they design throughout the class.
Contributors
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