Sandra Parsch

Practices of interaction with arithmetic tools in the classroom of the school entrance phase

In the classroom, interaction represents the space in which teaching and learning take place. Not only human actors shape everyday teaching practice, but also objects are involved in interactions and can significantly influence and co-determine their emergence. In this sense, they are to be understood as material actors that offer interpretation and action to human participants in interaction.

The research project takes up this perspective. It is dedicated to the observation and description of interactions in elementary school mathematics lessons with a focus on the integration of arithmetic tools. In doing so, not only a technical, mathematical-didactical perspective on everyday classroom activities is taken. It is asked how organizational procedures and subject-specific practices are mutually dependent.

The examination of arithmetic tools is a particularly exciting topic. They provide children with fundamental insights into abstract mathematical number and task relationships and structures that would otherwise be difficult to grasp. However, a mathematically sound understanding does not result from merely acting with the materials, but requires conscious handling and interaction with them.

By opening up the view on subject-related and organizational teaching processes in the classroom, it can become visible how this sensitive subject of using arithmetic tools is embedded in the structural conditions of the institution school and which practices of handling and use have become established.

Studies in Elementary School Teaching at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg