Development of spatial sense through the use of multiple representations in the context of traditional dance: one teaching experience in primary school

Abstract

This study is developed within the framework of a project that explored the connections between Mathematics and Dance, materializing in a teaching experience in one 8 years old class, and analyzes how the students developed their spatial sense through the use of multiple representations when solving challenging math tasks associated with traditional dance performance. Data analysis took the written productions of the students in response to three tasks that exploit a traditional dance. Students used diverse representations, consistently associating actively represented ideas, while dancing, and elaborate schemes and verbal explanations, evidencing a strong presence of contextual representation. They were able to schematize the spatial formations and the figures danced, but they manifested difficulties in representing the movements of the dancers. They have developed several aspects of the spatial sense, being generalized the understanding of the identified geometric objects and their properties and relations. However, they did not show the same ease of identification of the reflection and rotation symmetries present in the dance, although they have recognized the geometric transformation rotation. Localization and spatial orientation are other abilities that have been shown. This experience was an opportunity for the development with meaning and purpose, in an informal and integrated way, of their spatial sense, which has also mobilized issues associated with the measure