Paying It Forward: A Gift Economy of Poetry and Visual Art Images

As our world has changed rapidly and ineluctably with the COVID-19 pandemic, many are advocating an ethos of generosity and a gift economy, based on generative, creative offerings, as an alternative or balance to the excesses of a mainstream neoliberal exchange economy. What is the gift economy, and how does it entangle us in a fabric of mutual responsibility, obligation, creative practices and love, within the human and greater-than-human world? A Pay-It-Forward New Year\u27s gift game amongst a group of artist/ educators, ongoing since 2014, gives rise to this meditation on the gift economy, based on Mauss, Hyde, Kimmerer, Vaughan and Jordan\u27s work and contemplation of intergenerational, inter-being webs of mutuality. Visual artwork (photography and painting), and poetry and song that inspired and arose from the Pay-It-Forward engagement are part of this piece

“Because You Can Make Things With It”: A Rationale for a Project to Teach Mathematics as a Multimodal Design Tool in Secondary Education

This paper reports on the rationale for a new collaborative project at the University of British Columbia to develop multisensory software for secondary school mathematics learning. The project is described with reference to related mathematical, haptic, kinesthetic and musical software development for mathematics learning and in light of justifications for an embodied, multisensory, and fluidly translatable mathematics immediately applicable by students in purposeful ways

"Without Emotion, There Is Nothing Left But Burden": Teaching Mathematics through Heathcote's Improvisational Drama Why Use Drama in Conjunction with Mathematics Education?

Abstract This paper justifies the use of Heathcote's whole group improvisation drama in mathematics education and gives mathematical and non-mathematical examples. It is suggested that this technique for teaching curriculum through the medium of drama in an 'as if' setting engages students through immersive emotional and contextual modes of understanding. Why Use Drama in Conjunction with Mathematics Education? It is still considered an unusual idea to teach mathematics via the arts; and where the arts have been accepted into mathematics instruction, it is far more likely that they will be visual and sculptural media used for representing mathematical objects and relationships. It is not an enormous leap from drawing diagrams to making paintings, or from making models to sculpting them. Similarly, digital versions of painting and sculpting (and rotating those sculptures through digital animation) are more commonly accepted in the more conservative realms of mathematics education than are the performing arts: music, dance and drama. Of these three areas of the performing arts, drama might again seem the hardest 'sell', since it is particularly difficult to represent mathematical entities directly in a dramatic medium. Drama depends on character, dialogue, human interactions and emotions, and the abstract nature of mathematics has sometimes been seen to preclude these. For many learners, however, the removal of human relationships and emotions from mathematics leaves the discipline feeling cold and uninhabited. We are, after all, living human beings, and although mathematics can be treated abstractly, it has arisen (and continues to develop) through human interactions with the conditions of life. On occasion, it is important to recontextualize the abstract patterns of mathematics in their human setting, whether through acknowledgement of its history (see There are many ways that drama and dramatic performance can be used in education -for example, skits, improv games, simulation games, scriptwriting, putting on scripted plays and musicals and acting for film are some of the modes of drama and theatre used in school settings, most often in acting and drama classes. Some of these have been adopted for use in the teaching of mathematics. For example,

â Say What You Know, Do What You Must, Come What Mayâ : Women Mathematicians of Three Centuries Barred from Universities

Abstract: This talk will focus on Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-1799), Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850-1891), Emmy Noether (1882-1935). I will highlight the important mathematical research work carried out by these women despite being barred from official recognition (and pay) by their universities, enduring mockery for being female, and often being confined to their bedrooms as working spaces, where they literally papered the walls and filled shoeboxes under the bed with their work. The questions are about claiming space -- physical and social, public and private, domestic and professional -- as women in mathematics. Along with the life and work of these three mathematicians, I will also consider the process of researching and expressing that history to a broader audience via the arts. I am currently writing a mathematics history play about Agnesi, Kovelevskaya and Noether. The talk will include excerpts from the play, and open up to questions about taking space and articulating suppressed histories. About the speaker: Susan Gerofsky brings experience in a number of fields to bear in an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to mathematics education and curriculum theory. Her research is in embodied, multi sensory, multimodal mathematics education through the arts, movement, gesture and voice. She also works in environmental garden-based education, the language and genres of mathematics education, and media theory. She holds degrees in languages and linguistics as well as mathematics education, and worked for years in film production, adult education, and as a high school teacher.Non UBCUnreviewedAuthor affiliation: University of British ColumbiaFacult

The Wurzelschnecke (AKA Spiral of Theodorus): Understanding number and creating geometric design

This hands-on workshop will explore the Wurzelschnecke ("root snail"), a simple and elegant spiral construction based on right angle triangles, first attributed to Plato's tutor Theodorus of Cyrene in the 5th C BCE and still studied by mathematicians in our time. We will make and view versions of the Wurzelschnecke at a variety of scales and materials, and play with its possibilities in embodied geometric design in architecture, playground equipment, jewelry, mathematical millinery and more. Our focus will be on its potential use in education, supporting understanding of irrational numbers and trigonometry, and in the geometry of design. I'll share examples from earlier workshops with middle school and high school students, math teachers, grad students and faculty. Workshop participants should have the following materials at hand, if possible: paper, pencil or pen, ruler or straightedge with a square corner, scissors, corrugated cardboard. A protractor and/or carpenter's square are optional but might be helpful.Non UBCUnreviewedAuthor affiliation: University of British ColumbiaResearche

Learning Gardens for All: Diversity and Inclusion

By their nature, gardens embody diversity. This article explores the cultural significance and value of school gardens for diverse communities in restoring and reclaiming their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and resilience through stories, myths, and practical examples. It highlights details for experiential dimensions of garden based learning education. Grounded in the research-based, seven-fold benefits of garden-based sustainability education, this article is the international collaborative effort of garden researcher-practitioners from indigenous, multicultural, urban, biocultural, and STEM perspectives from over a half dozen different diversity-intensive urban learning gardens in the Pacific Northwest. It also describes dynamic experiential teaching approaches for sharing stories and engaging with hands-on approaches to garden-based learning at multiple scales and modes. Vivacious, research-based garden learning from regional learning gardens activates urban learning gardens as sites of diversity-enhancing sustainability education, nurturing the resilience and collaborative creativity required for biocultural flourishing