Education as Negotiation: The Case of Teaching Basic Probability

Presented by Dr. Dor Abrahamson, Professor, Learning Sciences & Human Development, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley

Sponsored by Matific

Watch the Recording

Closed captioning will be added to the recording within 2 weeks of the live presentation. Get a CE Certificate for this edWebinar Learn more.

When we teach, should we be teaching “at” students? Instead, could we think of teaching as a dialogue “with” students? What might that look like? Why might we care what students bring to the table? What if students get things wrong? Shouldn’t we just show them what’s right?

View this edWebinar with Dr. Dor Abrahamson to hear why education might be thought of as a negotiation between students’ informal intuitions and teachers’ formal procedures. The principle here is that students’ informal intuitions aren’t going away—if we want students to deeply understand new ideas, we need to work with, rather than against, their intuitions, even if these appear fundamentally wrong. Instead, we need to find under what conditions those intuitions would be correct, and we should create conditions where we can have a meaningful conversation about why we each see things the way we do. After all, if all students are getting it wrong in the same way, perhaps there’s something about the way evolution has shaped us that makes that way of seeing the world valuable for survival.

To bring this idea home, Dr. Abrahamson talks through some work he has done around simple introductory probability. We see why students “get it wrong,” how we might make that “right,” and how this could lead to deep learning.

This recorded edWebinar is of interest to teachers and school and district leaders of the kindergarten through middle school levels.

About the Presenter

Dr. Dor Abrahamson received his master’s in cognitive psychology from Tel Aviv University in Israel and his Ph.D. in the learning sciences from Northwestern University in the United States. Since 2005, Dr. Abrahamson has served as a member of faculty in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he established the Embodied Design Research Laboratory. Dr. Abrahamson is a design-based researcher who invents pedagogical technologies for teaching and learning mathematics. He analyzes data gathered in the course of evaluating these products to develop theoretical models of cognitive and social process leading to insight and fluency. Dr. Abrahamson is particularly interested in relations between learning to move in new ways and learning mathematics concepts. His research, which draws on embodied cognition, dynamic systems theory, and sociocultural theory, has been funded by federal agencies and private foundations. Otherwise, Dr. Abrahamson enjoys playing the cello, hiking, biking, reading, and spending time with his family and pets.

Closed captioning will be added to the recording within 2 weeks of the live presentation.

Join the Inspire Learning & Engagement community to network with educators, participate in online discussions, receive invitations to upcoming edWebinars, and view recordings of previous programs to earn CE certificates.

Matific is a world leading, pedagogically rigorous, hybrid learning platform for K-6 math. Matific has been academically proven to help improve test results by up to 34%. Matific combines engaging activities with a rigorous pedagogy ensuring students are kept engaged, whether at school or at home.