The object-tool duality in mathematical modelling - a framework to analyze students’ appropriation of Sankey diagrams to model dynamic processes
Peer reviewed, Journal article
Published version
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https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3124997Utgivelsesdato
2020Metadata
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Originalversjon
Vos, P. & Frejd, P. (2020). The object-tool duality in mathematical modelling - a framework to analyze students’ appropriation of Sankey diagrams to model dynamic processes. Avances de Investigación en Educación Matemática (AIEM), 17. https://doi.org/10.35763/aiem.v0i17.305Sammendrag
Students often do not experience the relevance of learning mathematics. This paper reports on an exploratory case study, in which a class of grade 8 students (n=35) was introduced to Sankey diagrams. The aim was to explore to what extent these students could appropriate Sankey diagrams, meaning: they could describe these as objects in themselves and they could use them to model and visualize phenomena relevant to them. Based on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, we developed an analytical construct defined as the object-tool duality, coordinating mathematics as a set of objects and as a set of tools. The analysis of students’ answers showed that they could use these diagrams as tools to visualize phenomena. When asked to describe the object, all mentioned the tool-side. So, in their appropriation the tool-side came before the object-side. Our contribution is that teaching the tool-side of mathematics
before the object-side may increase students’ sense of the relevance of mathematics, which is a topic to develop for future research.