The role of tools in mathematical learning: Coordinating mathematical and ecological affordances

수학 학습에서 도구의 역할에 관한 관점: 수학적 어포던스와 상황적 어포던스의 조정

It is widely recommended that teachers should actively mediate students' engagement with tools such as manipulative materials. This paper is to help to parse classroom life so that both social and psychological aspects are accounted for and coordinated. Building on the theory of affordances from ecological psychology and the activity theory from sociocultural perspectives, the main strategy of this paper is to view manipulative materials as simultaneously participating in social and psychological activity systems. Within these activity systems it is charted how both mathematical affordances related to the structure of mathematical concepts and ecological affordances related to socially situated classroom practices need to be considered by teachers in effective mediation of mathematical manipulatives. This paper has three major sections. The first section develops a theoretical extension of Gibson's theory of affordances from natural to social environments. The second section introduces mathematical and ecological affordances using empirical data from a grade two elementary school classroom. The third section illustrates the need of coordinating the two affordances as embedded in different activity systems.