The emergence of rhythmic patterns as a way of embodied mathematical knowing

This qualitative study is part of a 2-year longitudinal research focused on theorizing the role of the body in elementary students’ mathematical learning and understanding. More specifically, we are interested in exploring how children’s transactions with geometric objects give rise to ways of embodied knowing. Drawing on an exemplary episode in which a group of 3^rd-graders were classifying three-dimensional objects, our purpose is to illustrate a way of embodiment not addressed in previous investigations, namely “embodied rhythm”. A rhythmic choreography emerged during the transaction between one of the students with a cream carton. The rhythm of that choreography was especially clear in the beats the student performed on the object’s faces. Other two embodied dimensions produced the same rhythmic pattern: object orientation and body position. Based on a detailed micro-analysis, embodied rhythm is conceptualized as a way of mathematical knowing, as well as a means of objectification of mathematical understanding. Copyright © 2010 BSRLM.