My research focuses on aspects of embodiment, multimodality, and language in the teaching and learning of mathematics, encompassing individual and social factors of learning and drawing on a diversity of theoretical perspectives and methodologies. For example, my background in the role of gestures in mathematical thinking and learning led me towards a (initially naïve) interest in how the use of sign languages influences individual conceptualization of mathematical ideas of Deaf learners, but also learning as a social process shaped by modal and linguistic affordances different to those in the hearing classroom.
My background in the roles of embodiment, multimodality, and language in mathematical thinking and learning furthermore shapes my specific perspective on inclusive mathematics education.
More concretely, my research centralizes around the topics
Language, embodiment, and multimodality in the learning of mathematics
Mathematical conceptualization
Semiotics in mathematics
Mathematical epistemology
Mathematical anthropology and ethnomathematics
Gestures and sign language n the learning of mathematics
Critical inclusive mathematics education
All my projects deal with one or more of these topics, integrating a range of mathematical topics from elementary school to higher education and including diverse student population. Considering a diversity of settings and student populations with a plurality of abilities does not only aim to result in better addressing this diversity through more suitable teaching approaches and methods. I furthermore claim that by getting a variety of settings in conversation, we get a more comprehensive, wholistic and inclusive understanding of the teaching and learning of mathematics: If all we know is the colour blue, we cannot paint a rainbow. If all we look at is the mainstream classroom to describe processes of learning mathematics, we are not even close to getting a good picture of mathematical learning processes.
I am mainly engaged in qualitative researcher - not because I am fixated on qualitative methods, but because the questions I am interested in just happen to be tackled more appropriately within a qualitative approach. This includes phenomenography, ethnography, methodologies of interactionism, and in particular qualitative interviews, teaching experiments, case studies, and classroom studies.
However, it should be the questions that lead to the methods, not the other way around. So sometimes, a quantitative inquiry helps to shine light on qualitative phenomena, or a first quantiative exploration of a large data corpus can narrow the focus for qualitative analyses. In such cases, I am always happy to collaborate with colleagues who have a more profound knowledge of quantitative methods.
General theories of importance (within and beyond mathematics education) in lots of my framework encompass, beside others, semiotics, discourse theories, theories of embodied cognition and multimodality.
I constantly try to extend my theoretical and methodological horizon to make the frameworks fit my research questions, not the other way around.
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