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Tangibles for learning: a representational analysis of physical manipulation

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Abstract

Manipulatives—physical learning materials such as cubes or tiles—are prevalent in educational settings across cultures and have generated substantial research into how actions with physical objects may support children’s learning. The ability to integrate digital technology into physical objects—so-called ‘digital manipulatives’—has generated excitement over the potential to create new educational materials. However, without a clear understanding of how actions with physical materials lead to learning, it is difficult to evaluate or inform designs in this area. This paper is intended to contribute to the development of effective tangible technologies for children’s learning by summarising key debates about the representational advantages of manipulatives under two key headings: offloading cognition—where manipulatives may help children by freeing up valuable cognitive resources during problem solving, and conceptual metaphors—where perceptual information or actions with objects have a structural correspondence with more symbolic concepts. The review also indicates possible limitations of physical objects—most importantly that their symbolic significance is only granted by the context in which they are used. These arguments are then discussed in light of tangible designs drawing upon the authors’ current research into tangibles and young children’s understanding of number.

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Notes

  1. Blocks consisting of small unit cubes, rods made up of ten unit cubes and large cubes of 100 unit cubes in order to represent collections in base ten.

  2. Clements makes the case that by using the root meaning of the term ‘concrete’ as ‘grow together’, virtual manipulatives actually present more potential to provide ‘concrete’ representations than physical materials. ‘Concrete’ in this paper will refer to ‘relating to real world objects or experiences’ and may therefore be used to describe either physical or virtual materials.

  3. See Anderson [16] for a review of the field.

  4. The authors actually use the term ‘pyfo’ to describe a physical object as part of a Tangible User interface to avoid possible interpretations suggested by the terms ‘object’ or ‘physical object’.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by an Economic Social Research Council Case PhD studentship awarded to Professors Claire O’Malley and Steve Benford, and co-sponsored by Futurelab (Grant no. PTA-033-2006-00025). We would also like to thank the schools and children who have taken part and contributed greatly to our work.

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  1. London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education, 23-29 Emerald Street, London, WC1N 3QS, UK

    Andrew Manches

  2. School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK

    Claire O’Malley

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  1. Andrew Manches
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Correspondence to Andrew Manches.

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Manches, A., O’Malley, C. Tangibles for learning: a representational analysis of physical manipulation. Pers Ubiquit Comput 16, 405–419 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-011-0406-0

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