Enactivism and ethnomethodological conversation analysis as tools for expanding Universal Design for Learning: the case of visually impaired mathematics students

Blind and visually impaired mathematics students must rely on accessible materials such as tactile diagrams to learn mathematics. However, these compensatory materials are frequently found to offer students inferior opportunities for engaging in mathematical practice and do not allow sensorily heter...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:ZDM 2019-05, Vol.51 (2), p.291-303
Main Authors: Abrahamson, Dor, Flood, Virginia J., Miele, Joshua A., Siu, Yue-Ting
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access to Education
Assistive Technology
Blindness
Braille
Collaboration
Education
Epistemology
Frame design
Haptics
Inclusion
Instructional design
Learning
Learning activities
Learning Processes
Manipulative Materials
Mathematical analysis
Mathematics
Mathematics Education
Mathematics Instruction
Ontology
Original Article
Students
Teaching Methods
Universal design
Visual impairment
Visual Impairments
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Summary:Blind and visually impaired mathematics students must rely on accessible materials such as tactile diagrams to learn mathematics. However, these compensatory materials are frequently found to offer students inferior opportunities for engaging in mathematical practice and do not allow sensorily heterogenous students to collaborate. Such prevailing problems of access and interaction are central concerns of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), an engineering paradigm for inclusive participation in cultural praxis like mathematics. Rather than directly adapt existing artifacts for broader usage, UDL process begins by interrogating the praxis these artifacts serve and then radically re-imagining tools and ecologies to optimize usability for all learners. We argue for the utility of two additional frameworks to enhance UDL efforts: (a) enactivism, a cognitive-sciences view of learning, knowing, and reasoning as modal activity; and (b) ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA), which investigates participants’ multimodal methods for coordinating action and meaning. Combined, these approaches help frame the design and evaluation of opportunities for heterogeneous students to learn mathematics collaboratively in inclusive classrooms by coordinating perceptuo-motor solutions to joint manipulation problems. We contextualize the thesis with a proposal for a pluralist design for proportions, in which a pair of students jointly operate an interactive technological device.
ISSN:1863-9690
1863-9704
DOI:10.1007/s11858-018-0998-1