Designing for Embodied Sense-making of Mathematics: Perspectives on Directed and Spontaneous Bodily Actions

While mathematics is conventionally viewed as an abstract discipline, contemporary perspectives on embodied cognition underscore the significance of integrating students' bodily experiences into the learning process. However, the efficacy of embodied learning activities, as compared to traditional methods, remains under scrutiny. We argue that both directed and spontaneous bodily actions should be considered when designing embodied learning activities, and explore such bodily actions through two studies. A quantitative user study involving directed bodily actions in Virtual Reality and on tablet reveals VR's support for math-anxious and body-aware learners, and distinct movement patterns related to varying mathematical abilities. A subsequent qualitative analysis identifies key characteristics of spontaneous bodily actions, namely coarseness, muscle tension, repetitions, anchors, perspective, and metaphors. Derived from both studies, we propose design recommendations, advocating for expanded embodied interaction design, consideration of embodied metaphors, coarse gesturing for deep features identification, supporting of sense-making anchors, and in-VR learning assessments.