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 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

The interactional work of configuring a mathematical object in a technology-enabled embodied learning environment

We present a detailed account of interactional mechanisms that support participation in STEM disciplinary practices as an adult and a child explore a technology-enabled embodied learning environment for mathematics. Drawing on ethnomethodological studies of technologyrich workplaces, we trace the process of transforming a vague reference into a mutually available mathematical object: a covariant variable. Our analysis reveals that this mathematical object is an interactional achievement, configured via a reciprocal process of instructing one another's attention. In particular, we demonstrate how participants' explicit responsiveness to indexical and multimodal resources achieves this object

Directional adposition use in English, Swedish and Finnish

Directional adpositions such as to the left of describe where a Figure is in relation to a Ground. English and Swedish directional adpositions refer to the location of a Figure in relation to a Ground, whether both are static or in motion. In contrast, the Finnish directional adpositions edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) solely describe the location of a moving Figure in relation to a moving Ground (Nikanne, 2003). When using directional adpositions, a frame of reference must be assumed for interpreting the meaning of directional adpositions. For example, the meaning of to the left of in English can be based on a relative (speaker or listener based) reference frame or an intrinsic (object based) reference frame (Levinson, 1996). When a Figure and a Ground are both in motion, it is possible for a Figure to be described as being behind or in front of the Ground, even if neither have intrinsic features. As shown by Walker (in preparation), there are good reasons to assume that in the latter case a motion based reference frame is involved. This means that if Finnish speakers would use edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) more frequently in situations where both the Figure and Ground are in motion, a difference in reference frame use between Finnish on one hand and English and Swedish on the other could be expected. We asked native English, Swedish and Finnish speakers’ to select adpositions from a language specific list to describe the location of a Figure relative to a Ground when both were shown to be moving on a computer screen. We were interested in any differences between Finnish, English and Swedish speakers. All languages showed a predominant use of directional spatial adpositions referring to the lexical concepts TO THE LEFT OF, TO THE RIGHT OF, ABOVE and BELOW. There were no differences between the languages in directional adpositions use or reference frame use, including reference frame use based on motion. We conclude that despite differences in the grammars of the languages involved, and potential differences in reference frame system use, the three languages investigated encode Figure location in relation to Ground location in a similar way when both are in motion. Levinson, S. C. (1996). Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Crosslingiuistic evidence. In P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel & M.F. Garrett (Eds.) Language and Space (pp.109-170). Massachusetts: MIT Press. Nikanne, U. (2003). How Finnish postpositions see the axis system. In E. van der Zee & J. Slack (Eds.), Representing direction in language and space. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Walker, C. (in preparation). Motion encoding in language, the use of spatial locatives in a motion context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Lincoln, Lincoln. United Kingdo

A PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIMETIC LEARNING AND MULTIMODAL COGNITION: INTEGRATING EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE INTO PROGRAMS IN RHETORIC, COMPOSITION, AND TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION

My dissertation emphasizes a cognitive account of multimodality that explicitly integrates experiential knowledge work into the rhetorical pedagogy that informs so many composition and technical communication programs. In these disciplines, multimodality is widely conceived in terms of what Gunther Kress calls “socialsemiotic” modes of communication shaped primarily by culture. In the cognitive and neurolinguistic theories of Vittorio Gallese and George Lakoff, however, multimodality is described as a key characteristic of our bodies’ sensory-motor systems which link perception to action and action to meaning, grounding all communicative acts in knowledge shaped through body-engaged experience. I argue that this “situated” account of cognition – which closely approximates Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, a major framework for my study – has pedagogical precedence in the mimetic pedagogy that informed ancient Sophistic rhetorical training, and I reveal that training’s multimodal dimensions through a phenomenological exegesis of the concept mimesis. Plato’s denigration of the mimetic tradition and his elevation of conceptual contemplation through reason, out of which developed the classic Cartesian separation of mind from body, resulted in a general degradation of experiential knowledge in Western education. But with the recent introduction into college classrooms of digital technologies and multimedia communication tools, renewed emphasis is being placed on the “hands-on” nature of inventive and productive praxis, necessitating a revision of methods of instruction and assessment that have traditionally privileged the acquisition of conceptual over experiential knowledge. The model of multimodality I construct from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, ancient Sophistic rhetorical pedagogy, and current neuroscientific accounts of situated cognition insists on recognizing the significant role knowledges we acquire experientially play in our reading and writing, speaking and listening, discerning and designing practices

Spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in dance performance

In this paper we present a study of spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in live dance performance. A multidisciplinary team comprising a choreographer, neuroscientists and qualitative researchers investigated the effects of different sound scores on dance spectators. What would be the impact of auditory stimulation on kinesthetic experience and/or aesthetic appreciation of the dance? What would be the effect of removing music altogether, so that spectators watched dance while hearing only the performers’ breathing and footfalls? We investigated audience experience through qualitative research, using post-performance focus groups, while a separately conducted functional brain imaging (fMRI) study measured the synchrony in brain activity across spectators when they watched dance with sound or breathing only. When audiences watched dance accompanied by music the fMRI data revealed evidence of greater intersubject synchronisation in a brain region consistent with complex auditory processing. The audience research found that some spectators derived pleasure from finding convergences between two complex stimuli (dance and music). The removal of music and the resulting audibility of the performers’ breathing had a significant impact on spectators’ aesthetic experience. The fMRI analysis showed increased synchronisation among observers, suggesting greater influence of the body when interpreting the dance stimuli. The audience research found evidence of similar corporeally focused experience. The paper discusses possible connections between the findings of our different approaches, and considers the implications of this study for interdisciplinary research collaborations between arts and sciences

Comparative Cultural Studies. Multimodality and Intercultural Mediation

[Abstract] In this paper we present our current research that draws attention to the material vehicles of language, focusing on the multimodal forms that are becoming common place in Computer Mediated Communication. We take as starting point socio-constructivist approaches that have maintained that the development of higher mental functions is sociogenetic, thus arguing that cognitive development is first the result of exposure to the social plane and then to the psychological plane, a move that is semiotically mediated in social interaction. This conception of human cognitive development offers insights into the relations between mind development, education processes and socio-cultural and technological implications. We claim that acts of production, distribution and reception of cultural objects form the very symbolic structure of cultural phenomena, and that these performances are located in the materiality of informational exchanges. Furthermore, we indicate that discursive practices and images form the complex multimodal network of signifying practices that constructs realities, rather than simply representing them, and that socially constructed meaning or what we call “culture” takes place through the negotiation of stories, images, and meanings, that is, through performative, jointly-constructed agreements, power relations, and the authorisation and legitimating of social positions. Finally, we situate the study of art is a powerful metacognitive tool that portrays the evolution of human culture. We defend the important role of humanities in processes of social construction and contend that this role is further enhanced through the use of multimodal forms of support. The example of a piece of electronic literature (“30 Days of Rain” by Travis Alber serves a practical show-case that presents the need for a new framework on multimodal social semiotics capable of explain multimodal encounters mediated by digital media

Time and sequentiality as key developmental dimensions of joint action

Joint action, generally defined as working together towards a common purpose, has become an important concept in many areas of cognitive science, from philosophical appraisal of its core concepts to empirical mapping of its psychological development. Within standard cognitive accounts, to engage in a joint action requires an inferential process of representing the other’s intentions and plans to enable social coordination for a shared goal. However, growing endorsement of a contrasting view from embodied and situated accounts of social cognition proposes that joint action is better understood as a dynamic, situated interactional process where participants "roll into" joint action without requiring reflective or representational awareness of it. This work proposes a rethinking of how we conceive the nature of action and its development as joint action early in human life. With particular reference to developmental studies, we advance a rationale for the conceptual framework of joint action to include its temporal and sequential structures, and their intrinsic prospective qualities of human action, solitary or shared, as key analytical aspects for the study of how infants understand and share meaning with another, in joint interaction

New Multimodal Designs for Foreign Language Learning

Semiotiske multimodale teorier taler om nye affordanser (”handlemuligheder”) i medie- og læringslandskaber, hvilket både teoretisk og empirisk møder genklang i Universal Design for Learning (UDL) -og Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL)-litteraturen, men pga. de to tilganges henholdsvis neurodidaktiske og teknologiske orientering mangler begge et teoretisk fundament inden for semiotisk multimodalitet og læringsøkologi. Beriget med multimodalitetsteori og økologiske perspektiver kan UDL og CALL krydsbefrugtes til at danne et multimodalt og økologisk bevidst inkluderende design for sprogindlæring. Denne hypotese undersøges teoretisk som en del af et igangværende projekt og dernæst i et empirisk undersøgelsesdesign, der udforsker digital stilladsering. Multimodale og økologiske perspektiver anvendes til at analysere affordanser og økologier i CALL- og UDL-baserede læringsdesign. På baggrund af denne analyse opbygges et principstyret UDL-CALL læringsdesign. Til den empiriske afprøvning foreslås et mixed-methods-undersøgelsesdesign, og foreløbige undersøgelsesresultater præsenteres, der antyder UDL-CALL-designets gangbarhed.Semiotic multimodality theory speaks of new learning affordances in media ecologies, which is both theoretically and empirically echoed in UDL and in CALL literature, but owing to their neuro-didactic respectively technology-driven standpoints both approaches lack theoretical underpinnings for ecology and semiotic multimodality. Enhanced with multimodality theory and ecological perspectives UDL and CALL can crossbreed, forming a multimodally and ecologically aware inclusive design for language learning. This study from an ongoing project investigates the hypothesis from a theoretical and an empirical perspective, examining digital scaffolds. Multimodal-semiotic and ecological perspectives are used to analyse affordances and ecologies in CALL and UDL learning designs. From this analysis, a principled UDL-CALL learning design is constructed. For empirical testing, a mixed-methods research design is proposed, presenting preliminary results indicative of the design’s viability