This is the second post about our latest Research in Action podcasts on the Mr Barton Maths Podcast. This pod features a Centre of Early Mathematics Learning (CEML) colleague Andrew Manches, from the University of Edinburgh and you can hear the episode here or in your usual podcast app.

In this wide ranging discussion, Andrew talks about his work including how to translate research into practice, embodied learning and the use of technology in cognition.

Andrew writes:

In my role as a Co-Investigator for Loughborough’s Centre of Early Mathematics Learning (CEML) at Loughborough I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Craig Barton. You can listen to the pod  here. The interview was very relaxed, giving me the opportunity to share work as well as personal thoughts on the challenges of translating educational research into classroom practice, and the opportunities and risks of emerging technologies.

In our discussion about translating educational research into practice, I was able to draw on recent work critically reflecting on the tension between the depth and scale of translation. The former is often more familiar to academics -the opportunities to engage in depth with non-academic partners on projects, or to attend, and write for, events targeting practitioners. Here there has been much effort, and much improvement in academic ‘knowledge-exchange’, although the increasing volume and noise of information in the world makes this increasingly challenging. Unfortunately, however, this work is often limited to already interested parties; it is harder to scale impact to the thousands of educators and children our work seeks to benefit. There are avenues – identifying and communicating with key stakeholders and gatekeepers – but what about when our research develops educational resources for children – how do we develop and scale these sustainably?

Here I was able to draw on several projects that have explored the potential to scale resources informed by underpinning research. Generally, these resources draw upon my research field of ‘embodied learning’, an emerging area in education drawing upon cognitive theories that our embodied (body-based) interaction shapes how we think. For an educational example, how a child may conceptualise ‘addition’ in terms of physically bringing two groups of objects together. One way we can explore embodiment is looking at the spontaneous gestures that we create when communicating our thinking. For example, how young children use their hands when they lack the language. Or how adults naturally use gestures when explaining ideas to children, although they may not be aware they are doing so. These gestures reveal much about how we think. This is why on one project we created a game – STEM Charades – which educators (and parents) can play with children (with or without the physical resource) to reflect on how we use our hands to represent and explain different ideas.  

In other work, we have explored the potential of technology to provide new interaction experiences. This is not about artificial intelligence (although our group is exploring the impact and potential of AI for young children), but rather how we can represent ideas – such as numbers – in new ways through technology. As an example, we are creating a virtual number representation within a creative environment (Numbuko) as part of CEML to enable young children to explore numerical relationships through colour. We are also exploring how Numbuko could be physical – digitally augmented blocks – allowing children to physically add groups of objects together and see the numerical changes through colour.  

Trying to scale ‘adoption’ of educational resources is challenging and presents awkward questions to academics about the boundaries of their role. The government is encouraging social-minded (e.g., educational) ventures from research – but do academics have the time, support, or motivation? While personally I lack time, my previous career as an infant teacher gives the motivation to try and find ways to scale resources – whether through industry partners or directly through entrepreneurship. Importantly, I feel where academics do try to develop or support the development of research-informed resources, they have more voice to critique the many proliferating resources already out there – which as anyone attending an educational technology show recently will testify – is only set to accelerate. 

We’d love to know what you think, so please drop us a line or get in touch with Andrew if you’d like to know more about his work.

You can listen to the previous Research in Action series on Craig’s podcast page here.

This blog post was edited by Chris Shore.