Since 2017 we have been working closely with Mathematics teachers from a school in Singapore to think about how curriculum in that disciplinary domain may be designed in order to surface learner intuition in Math.

We were motivated by Lave (1992 p.77), who identified a source of difficulty in students’ understanding of mathematics topics in a classroom setting as “the gulf between math learning in school and the everyday experience of children trying to bring their intuitions to bear while learning math in school.”

Lave (1992, p.78) observed that “Children’s intuitions about the everyday world are in fact constantly violated in situations in which they are asked to solve word problems. This discontinuity by itself may help create the division between ‘real’ and ‘other’ mathematics by conveying the message that what the children know about the real world is not valid…”

The approach we have been developing involves the use of portable, programmable robots.

These Accelerobots may be used in a variety of ways and at different age cohorts. Their applications are suited to the Math syllabi at various grade levels, addressing what are known as Problems with Real-World Contexts.

In the diagram , we see a group of students using the Accelerobot in ways relating to vectors and scale. Leveraging principles of embodied cognition, their Mathematics teachers have designed activities around the Accelerobots which help the students surface their nascent intuitions about these relatively abstract Mathematical concepts in ways for their peers and teachers to dialogue around.