Development of mathematical concepts in children's learning geometry: a Vygotskian, body-centered approach

Abstract

Pedagogical theories often posit the source of conceptual development in the literacy of an individual child or teacher and therefore suggest instructional strategies or instructional models based on (frequently unquestioned) presuppositions about the learning process. These theories give little attention to the real conditions that make the (real-time) communication of an idea possible in the first place. In this study, we extend the Vygotskian approach to literacy and word-meaning to give the body a central role in conceptual development. We exemplify the claims that: (a) the body constitutes the mediating hub that translates, in an ongoing manner, the experience of the world (objects) and the word in communication; and (b) the body constitutes the mediating hub that generates a new meaning unit of the word. We conclude that a body-centered framework helps understand the labour that increases the embodied resources for translating the sound-word-meaning.

Keywords:

• concept development
• word-meaning
• the body
• Vygotsky

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes

1. The page numbers subsequent to quotations in this paper refer to Vygotsky (1986).

2. The following transcription conventions are used in this paper:

[what	=	Beginning of gestures and body movements that contemporaneously overlap the words underlined.
((The))	=	Italicized words within double parentheses constitute transcribers' comments on visible body movements.
(0.9)	=	Elapsed time in tenth of a second.
*	=	Asterisk mark denotes an instant that corresponds to a drawing of video-offprint of which the figure number is labeled at the end of the comments.
<<p>well>	=	Lower speech volume (piano) than normal.
(find out?)	=	Question mark in parentheses indicates inaudible utterance(s).
cu:be	=	Lengthening of a phoneme is indicated by colon.
?,;.	=	Punctuation marks are used to indicate characteristics of speech production rather than grammatical units.
it's-	=	Dash indicates sudden stop of talk.