Going deeper, challenge and pleasure in learning

 Pedagogical scenario2 (Number Sequences in Portugal)

Note: This is part of a longer document – Number Sequences in Portugal (qualitative analysis) – where it is presented our evaluation of children learning.

The possibility, the difficulties and the pleasure to go deeper and cross boundaries push learning

With this little story we aim to illustrate the role of some elements of the environment created for and with WebLabs activities (in Number sequences – the Guess my Robot activity) that helped children to enjoy the challenge of going deeper in their mathematical thinking and talking.

For this small learning snapshot we will bring the voice of the teacher (Ana Sofia Alves) and the child (Rita Alexandra) from the Vale de Milhaços School, something that is possible by having access to the teacher’s written notes.

Reading the reflection written by the teacher about what she observed to happen in the session with this girl (Rita Alexandra) we can see that a strong interaction happens at distance between the student and a teacher from other site (a Portuguese one). For this interaction it was used not only the Plone but also an Instant messaging system (MSN) that allowed the child to discuss online directly with that teacher. By following and analyzing the interaction that happens in Plone between them we can see that the girl was deeply engaged in the participation with a strong sense of ownership of the situation. She was not merely responding to a teacher question but she was in control of the situation deciding how far and how deep she wanted to go in the resolution of the challenges that were previously published on the Plone. For this girl, the possibility of working in a more demanding way than usually she was able with peers within her site was something available within the community of participants in Number Sequence Activity. She grasped the opportunity and what she was able to develop gave her (i) great pleasure (being nominated by her, in a clinical interview done at the end of the sessions, as the moment of the Project she enjoyed the most) and (ii) ‘food-for-thought’ that took her to improve her way of thinking about sequences and numbers in general as we can see referred by her teacher in the following part of the already mentioned written reflection.

Here the teacher tells that happens with this girl at the last session, when the rest of the group was finishing their work. She proposed to Rita Alexandra to see a web report that a member from the English team (Yshay) published with a different kind of challenge. The child engaged with enthusiasm in the challenge and she was working with mathematical concepts that were completely out of her knowledge as they were not in her school mathematical level. In the comment she wrote to Yshay we are not able to see most of the interesting things that happen with her, but from the teacher notes we can see some of the actual phrases the child produced and we can realize not only how they were interesting but also the difficulties she had in formulating her doubts and her thoughts. She didn’t have, at that moment, the formal mathematical knowledge (the formal vocabulary to speak mathematically about her thoughts on the subject) but she was able to organize orally and for her teacher her own questioning in a way that usually we don’t see among children at her school level.

To be a participant in a community rich in diversity (such as the WebLabs) where she knows that there was a virtual space with challenges available to everyone – (i) at various levels of difficulty, (ii) published by different kind of persons (children like her, or teachers as her own or researchers) that share the same semi-public space to communicate – played an important role on her engagement. But also the nature of the challenges – that are (i) about a theme she shared at a certain level, (ii) usually worked with a certain kind of resources (TT tools and Plone) that she was already familiar with, but (iii) that were (them and resources) still challenging for her – pushed her to have confidence enough to go deeper and to enjoy and, so, being able to play with some mathematical ideas that were unfamiliar to her. At the same time the open access of the system – (i) things to be available and to be possible for her to decide what to do and at what level she wants to go (that is, to be the possible for her to decide and to formulate what are the problems she want to confront herself with) and (ii) the possibility of having different interlocutors that she decides to make more or less present (here and now) at her own interest, and for what she needs and wants to deal with, and to communicate with for whatever she decides – not only pushed her but allowed her to be able to formulate very interesting questions and to think mathematically about some problems and in terms that were completely new for her.

In this way, we can say that the environment created in WebLabs sessions – the activities proposed, the challenges published, the system that promoted and sustained easily the communication and gave free access to what has been created by everyone, the diversity of people available and present to interact in the discussion – was full of resources like those that played an important role for nourish the engagement of this girl and in this way for her mathematical learning. And those resources were really saw by her as resources that she was allowed to use but, what make her confident to really use them was also her awareness of how her role was important for the development of the Project itself. In a sense it was here a certain feel of reciprocity; the girl knew that she was a legitimate participant so a member of the project just like others, each of them with different roles to play that were complementary, so all of them were important.