Family meshworks: children’s geographies and collective ambulatory sense-making in an immersive mathematics exhibition

Kelton, ML, Ma, JY, Rawlings, C, Rhodehamel, B, Saraniero, P and Nemirovsky, R (2018) Family meshworks: children’s geographies and collective ambulatory sense-making in an immersive mathematics exhibition. Children's Geographies, 16 (5). pp. 543-557. ISSN 1473-3285

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Abstract

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. We present a video-based study of family visits to Taping Shape, an immersive exhibition that allows visitors to explore the inside of geometric objects. The exhibition was designed to support embodied sense-making, intimacy, and material encounter with mathematical objects. This study builds on research on walking and movement as forms of place- and sense-making. We draw on the notion of a meshwork to examine how children and their families co-produce, develop familiarity with, and assemble meanings for the exhibition space. This case study focuses on 4-year-old Easton and his extended family, exploring how Easton’s talk and movements are part of an intergenerational meshwork that weaves together an emergent and distributed sense of place within the built geometries of Taping Shape. Our findings further considerations of embodiment and materiality in children’s geographies.