Browsing by Author "Takeuchi, Miwa A."

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    Critical envisioning of embodiment in mathematics teaching
    (2021-09-20) Takeuchi, Miwa A.; Dadkhahfard, Shima
    A body of scholarship on embodied mathematics learning has demonstrated the process of mathematics learning that is inseparable from learner bodies. Thus far, the scholarship on embodied mathematics learning has made limited connections with the critical conceptual-ization of embodiment that allows us to see the history and power behind mathematization of bodies. How can teacher candidates come to see embodiment in mathematics learning through critical lenses? In this study, we consider the possibility of utilizing digital illustrated stories based on ethnographic findings on (im)migrant families’ intergenerational embodied mathe-matics learning. We present preliminary findings to illuminate how teacher candidates’ discourses became heterogenous when they made meaning of the details in the designed illustrated story.
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    Embodied and emplaced mathematical literacy: A refugee family's funds of knowledge toward regenerative farming
    (2021-09-20) Takeuchi, Miwa A.; Elhowari, Raneem; Yuen, Jenny
    In this paper, we present our preliminary findings from our ongoing ethnographic study on out-of-school mathematics learning for refugee families. Our paper provides a glimpse of embodied and emplaced mathematical literacy exercised by a Syrian refugee family engaging in intergenerational, small-scale farming practices, during the pandemic. Aligned with the funds of knowledge framework, we depicted a sketch of mathematical literacy that the family, including young learners, competently engaged. Our analyses call for the discussion on mathematical literacy that could challenge the hegemonic and normative relationships between body and place, and could lead us to the liberating interanimated relationships between body and place.
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    Geopolitical Configuration of Identities and Learning: Othering through the Institutionalized Categorization of “English Language Learners”
    (2020-10-05) Takeuchi, Miwa A.
    This study critically examines how the geopolitical configuration of identities, through the medium of the institutionalized label of “English language learners,” can shape and constrain localized experiences for learners. An ethnographic video study was conducted in the context of a mathematics unit (“the transforming recess unit”) wherein learners conducted surveys, summarized data, and voiced the changes they hoped to see in the elementary school playground. Findings demonstrate both empowering and disempowering ways of mobilizing data and graphs, which are intertwined with multi-layered identities. Interactions in the classroom were nested in macro-level geopolitical configuration of identities that influenced labelled learners’ access to becoming “agents of change” who could voice their desired changes in school practices. Categorical and binary frameworks inscribed in mathematics curriculum served as a context for inheritance and reproduction of existing categories through student surveys and graphs. Implications are discussed toward disrupting and transforming taken-for-granted labeling and rigid institutionalized practices through which colonial representation of the Other can be co-constructed.
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    Healthy Weight Discourses Among Students in Graduate Level, Mental Health Focused, Education Programs
    (2020-09-17) Boutilier, Katrina J.; Russell-Mayhew, Shelly K.; Domene, José F.; Takeuchi, Miwa A.
    The definition of what constitutes a healthy weight has become debatable over recent years. In this study, discourses around healthy weight were explored among eight graduate students in mental health focused, education programs at the University of Calgary. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analysed using discursive psychology. A total of six interpretive repertoires were found through analysis as follows: measurable/visual, non-measurable/internal, tension/growth, behavioural, educational, and biological. The ways in which students in graduate level, mental health focused, education programs construct healthy weight may impact how these individuals treat future clients, especially those in large bodies. As such, the findings from this study provide support for expanding training in the area of healthy weight within the curriculum of these graduate programs.
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    “I just won against myself!”: Fostering early numeracy through boardgame play and redesign
    (2019-11) Jaques, Shayla; Kim, Beaumie; Shyleyko-Kostas, Anna; Takeuchi, Miwa A.
    Children can develop a wide variety of mathematical concepts as well as positive relationships with mathematics through playing and redesigning board games. In this article, we introduce the process of integrating board game play and redesign into early mathematics classrooms. Presenting the cases from Kindergarten and Grade 3 and 4 classrooms in a linguistically and culturally-diverse school, we highlight learning opportunities that fostered early numeracy. We discuss how children used and demonstrated their understanding of integrated numeracy including subitizing, understanding ordinality and cardinality of number, area-model of multiplication, spatial reasoning and problem-posing and problem-solving. Learning that children engaged in was holistic: the project not only fostered children’s early numeracy, but also helped them develop a positive relationship with mathematics and social rules to play games together, and see themselves as designers, problem-solvers, and creative people.
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    Intellectual Emancipation and Embodiment in Early Mathematics Learning
    (2020-09-15) Liu, Shimeng; Takeuchi, Miwa A.; Sengupta, Pratim; Simmons, Marlon
    When mathematics language is defined narrowly, emergent bilinguals in classrooms could be systematically positioned as “learners of deficiency.” Recent scholarships in the field of learning sciences call for expanding the notion of mathematics language and scrutinising learning opportunities of emergent bilinguals in relation to the history and institutional spaces. Taking a holistic and critical perspective, this study draws from Rancière’s notion of intellectual emancipation as the leverage for emergent bilinguals’ agency in mathematics learning. My study was situated in a larger project conducted in a linguistically and racially diverse school in Western Canada. Together with a teacher, the research team altered temporal-spatial structure of the mathematics classroom that can mobilize learners’ bodies in an intellectually emancipatory manner. My analysis focused on classroom discourses and emergent bilinguals’ agency in different configurations of learning environment. My findings show, in the routine session, the teacher’s intelligence and will prevailed over that of students, thus the Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) or Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) sequences were quickly completed and the discourses alternative to the pre-set plan were discouraged. The narrow space that configured the routine session also constrained the mathematics thinking mediated by bodies to a minimal level. The teacher’s monitoring of students’ physical movements further tightened the control over learner bodies. In this learning environment, the mathematical thinking and learning tended to be compressed to unidirectional acquirement. Conversely, in the designed session, the teacher’s will and students’ intelligence took the lead. Temporal structure of classroom discourse was thinned out to the expanded intervals between teacher utterance and student utterances, and even with the absence of “evaluation” in the sequence of IRE/F. The previously restrictive area in the school was transformed to a place that augments the embodied mathematics learning. Temporally and spatially, the designed sessions were expanded and offered more uncertainty and spontaneity due to the decreased control of the teacher as an explicator. In this context, mathematics pedagogy offered a complex system of iterative adaptation and decentralized learning. Based on these findings, I discuss how integrating embodied learning and the perspective of intellectual emancipation can address equity issues in early mathematics education.
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    “Mostly symbiotic but partly parasitic”: Constructions of cell phone use
    (2020-01) Sapacz, Mackenzie; Strong, Tom; Russell-Mayhew, Shelly K.; Takeuchi, Miwa A.
    Cell phones are complex tools that offer many functions and are represented in a multitude of ways in the literature, from addiction concerns to providing mobile therapy. In this research, I explored how cell phone users construct their relationship with their cell phone. Ten participants were interviewed about their experiences within three types of cell phone use: non-problematic cell phone use, problematic cell phone use, and the transition between non-problematic and problematic cell phone use. I approached this research from a social constructionism perspective and analyzed data using interpretative repertoires discourse analysis. Interpretative repertoires were identified within each of the three types of cell phone use. Results demonstrated when users make sense of their relationship with their cell phone, they pay attention to intentionality, mindful presence, the amount of time spent on their cell phone, distracting and addictive qualities of their cell phone, the utility of the cell phone, and the process by which they make active choices regarding how to engage with their device. Findings are discussed with respect to the relationship to the current literature on cell phone use, and implications for counsellors and future research.
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    School Wellness Action Research: from an Arts-Based Transformative Activist Stance
    (2021-01-16) Munroe, Karena; Jacobsen, D. Michelle; Friesen, Sharon; Takeuchi, Miwa A.; Johnston, Dawn; Irwin, Rita L.
    This study explored educational change that privileges teachers to be co-authors and drivers of school wellness action activated through an arts-based focus on hopeful futures. The SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic added school lockdowns to the context resulting in modifications to the study, primarily the exclusion of student voice and face-to-face participation. Eight participants engaged in discussion and field-testing of virtual arts-lab activities aimed at enhancing school wellness rooted in their realities as educators. Two phases of an arts-based participatory approach to action research generated creative data. Data collection included educator and researcher reflections, arts-lab observations, and my descriptions of participant-created artwork. The results provided the basis for an arts-lab toolkit for educators and an animated video story for the broader community. This participatory arts-based approach to action research was grounded in an arts-lab created from a transformative activist stance (Stetsenko, 2017). It offered opportunities for participants to affirm their control and participation in action critical for change. Second, the arts-lab tool offers participants a means to actively engage in characterizing and exploring their personal values as opportunities for school wellness improvement. Educators endorsed a four-part arts-lab where art-pieces created at every session portray ideas and provide a centrepiece for deepened conversation. Third, arts processes provide opportunities to enable agentive creativity for artists while offering contributions to the school community-in-the-making that encourage connections between the art, the artists, and the audience. The collective development of an arts-lab encourages participants to contribute artifacts to the broader community’s conversation as artists and activists.
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    Transdisciplinarity in STEM Education: A Critical Review
    (2020-04-12) Takeuchi, Miwa A.; Sengupta, Pratim; Shanahan, Marie Claire; Adams, Jennifer Dawn; Hachem, Maryam
    Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education garnered significant attention in recent years and has emerged as a key field of research globally. The goal of this article is to offer a critical review of how STEM education and its transdisciplinarity were defined and/or positioned in empirical studies published during the early formulation of the field. In particular, we sought to identify how these studies conceptualize learners and learning and portray the underlying assumptions in light of the macrosystemic discourses that often serve as ideological forces in shaping research and practice of STEM education. We examined 154 peer-reviewed articles published between January 2007 and March 2018 and analysed them along several emergent dimensions: their geo-spatial focus, focal disciplinary areas, methodological and theoretical assumptions, and major findings. Grounded in a critical transdisciplinary perspective, we used critical discourse analysis to identify how macrosystemic and institutionalized forces — overtly and implicitly — shape what counts as STEM education research, including its goals and conceptualizations of learners and learning. Our analysis highlights the need for aesthetic expansion and diversification of STEM education research by challenging the disciplinary hegemonies and calls for reorienting the focus away from human capital discourse.
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    Understanding High School Teacher Perceptions of Professional Learning Experiences: A Case Study of School-Based Professional Learning Communities
    (2019-08-03) Kessy, Elaine; Lock, Jennifer V.; Eaton, Sarah Elaine; Koh, Kim H.; Takeuchi, Miwa A.
    In K-12 education, there is an expectation that teachers will participate in professional learning throughout their careers and one model for its delivery is the Professional Learning Community (PLC). The potential advantages of participation in PLCs have been well-documented and many schools around the world have implemented them with mixed results to date. This dissertation study focused on teacher perceptions of professional learning experiences in school-based PLCs. A qualitative case study was designed and implemented through a constructivist theoretical lens. Participants in the study included ten high school teachers who were members of school-based PLCs in one private, Catholic high school in the United States. Data collection methods included PLC documentation, a participant background questionnaire and one-on-one interviews. Through analysis of the data, four key findings emerged: 1) impact of collaboration and support on teacher professional learning, 2) the need for subject-area group formation and teacher agency in PLC implementation, 3) allotment and management of time, and 4) a clear definition of the purpose of the school-based PLC that is teacher generated and directly tied to student learning. These findings convey the need for an intentional design of school-based PLCs that focuses on the conditions that offer the most potential to create impactful active professional learning experiences for teachers.