Geometry Resources in Dance (GRiD): Design-based educational research of an innovative gridded floor mat for students to objectify their tacit attentional anchors for movement coordination into auxiliary lines for geometric practice
Dor Abrahamson, Professor
Education
Closed. This professor is continuing with Fall 2024 apprentices on this project; no new apprentices needed for Spring 2025.
What do dancing and geometrical proof have in common? Turns out that in both of these disparate practices, we imagine lines to solve the common problem of perceptually engaging the environment to perform sensorimotor tasks. In dance, these lines have been called “attentional anchors.” In geometry, these lines are called “auxiliary constructions.” However, whereas dancing may come naturally to people and bear cultural identity and personal meaning, geometry is often viewed as unnatural and has nothing to do with the body. Our GRiD project stands as a bridge, aiming to design a blended dance-geometry space where children can draw on their natural attentional anchors to generate auxiliary lines.
We are looking for undergraduate students to aid in data analysis of students' interactions with the GRiD.
Role: Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Ratih Ayu Apsari, Doctoral Student
Qualifications: Students should have basic experience/ familiarity with design-based research and/or other qualitative methods. In addition, students should have an interest in cognitive science, mathematics education, embodied cognition, and multimodal communication.
Hours: 3-5 hrs
Social Sciences Engineering, Design & Technologies Education, Cognition & Psychology