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2000-The Role of Collecting in The Growth of Mathematical Understanding-Pirie & Martin
2000-The Role of Collecting in The Growth of Mathematical Understanding-Pirie & Martin
2, 127-146
Folding back is one of the key components of the Pirie-Kieren Dynamical Theory
for the Growth of Mathematical Understanding. This paper looks at one aspect of
folding back, that of collecting. Collecting occurs when students know what is
needed to solve a problem, and yet their understanding is not sufficient for the
automatic recall of useable knowledge. They need to recollect some inner layer
understanding and consolidate it through use at an outer layer in the light of their
now more sophisticated understanding of the concept in question. The collecting
phenomenon is described and distinguished through exemplars of classroom
discourse, and implications for teachers and learners are discussed.
In recent years, there has been much interest in exploring the nature of
mathematical understanding. For examples, see the work of Bergeron and
Herscovics (1989), Byers and Herscovics (1977), Cobb, Yackel, and Wood (1992),
Gray and Tall (1994), Hiebert and Carpenter (1992), Sfard (1991), Sierpinska (1990,
1994). Skemp (1976), Tall (1978), and Walkerdine (1988). A full review of these
views of mathematical understanding is presented in Martin (1999). This paper is
concerned exclusively with a theory advanced over the past ten years or so by
Susan Pirie and Tom Kieren.
process, Pirie and Kieren were influenced by the work of Maturana a n d Tomm
(1986); Tomm (personal communication, 1989); and Maturana and Varela (1987),
who see "knowing [as] exhibited by effective actions as these are determined by an
observer" and "the h u m a n knower of mathematics as self-referencing and self
maintaining in a particular niche of behavioural possibilities" (p. 8).
The Pirie-Kieren theory provides a way of considering understanding which
recognises and emphasises the interdependence of all the participants in an
environment. It shares the enactivist view of learning and understanding as an
interactive process. The location of understanding in the "realm of interaction
rather than subjective interpretation" and a recognition that "understandings are
enacted in our moment-to-moment, setting-to-setting movement" (Davis, 1996, p.
200) allows and requires the discussion of understanding not as a state to be
achieved but as a dynamic and continuously unfolding phenomenon. Hence, it
becomes appropriate not to talk about understanding as such, but about the
process of coming to understand and about the ways that mathematical
understanding shifts, develops, and grows as a learner moves within the world.
Enactivism recognises the Piagetian or radical constructivist view that what a
learner learns is determined by his or her individual structure, and acknowledges
the work of Von Glasersfeld (1987) in moving away from a definition of
understanding as an acquisition to that of a continuing process of organising and
re-organising. However, enactivism departs from constructivism in that
understanding is seen not only as subjective and individually unique but also as
something that can be shared through interaction. Developing the enactivist notion
of cognition as an adequate functioning in an ever-changing, interactive world,
understandings are seen to be not merely dynamic but also "relationally,
contextually, and temporally specific" and thus, as "one moves away from a
particular situation, one's understandings, as revealed in one's actions, m a y change
dramatically. And so, while understandings might be shared during moments of
interactive unity, they inevitably diverge as the participants come back to their
selves" (Davis, 1996, p. 200).
Enactivism's other major departure from constructivism is a move to
acknowledge the actions of the learner and to see understanding in terms of
effective actions. This notion of effective actions also allows for both formulated
and unformulated understandings. A learner who cannot state or verbalise their
understanding m a y still exhibit understanding through their actions. Davis (1996)
talks of these as "a part of our acting in the w o r l d - - a n acting that 'understands' the
difference between a single or a pair of raised fingers before it can count, an acting
that 'understands' that a sequence of two perpendicular cuts produces four pieces
before it realizes the process is multiplicative. These are understandings that are
actions of the body's doing" (p. 201). Within the Pirie-Kieren theory, cognition and
understanding are more than merely a process of reflective abstraction on mental
objectifications of experiences. Instead, experiences and actions such as Davis
describes themselves form part of the understanding and are enfolded and
enclosed within the more formal. In the Pirie-Kieren theory, growth in
understanding is seen as a dynamic and active process involving the building of
and acting in a mathematical world.
It is important to briefly consider the nature, purpose, and use of the Pirie-
The Role of Collecting in the Growth of Mathematical Understanding 129
Kieren theory. Von Glasersfeld (1995) talks of a "theoretical model" (p. 190) and
this is perhaps the most useful description of the Pirie-Kieren theory. It has grown
and evolved into a theory that can be used by a teacher or a researcher as a tool for
listening and observing in the context of mathematical activity. It offers a
theoretical way of looking at growing understanding as it is happening. It is a
system by which an observer (a teacher or a researcher) can observe understanding
not in terms of a personal acquisition or an acquired state but as an on-going
process. (We prefer to use the word "knowledge" for static acquisition). Hence, it
allows a person to observe understanding in action and prompts the looking for
relationships between less and more formal understanding actions. It is a
theoretical thinking tool for a person who is observing mathematical
understanding and who might be interacting with students who are engaging in
understanding actions.
Levelsfor Understanding
The Pirie-Kieren theory contains, for a specific person and a specified topic,
eight potential levels for understanding. These are named Primitive Knowing,
Image Making, Image Having, Property Noticing, Formalising, Observing,
Structuring, and Inventising. A diagrammatic representation or model is provided
by the eight nested circles in Figure 1. Each layer contains all previous layers and is
included in all subsequent layers. This set of unfolding layers suggests that any
more formal or abstract layer of understanding action enfolds, unfolds from, and is
connected to inner, less formal, less sophisticated, less abstract, and more local
ways of acting. Although the rings of the model grow outward toward the more
abstract and general, growth in understanding is not seen to happen that way.
Instead, growth occurs through a continual movement back and forth through the
levels of knowing, as the individual reflects on and reconstructs their current and
previous knowledge. Pathways of growth drawn across this model illustrate the
fact that growth in understanding need be neither linear nor unidirectional.
Of particular relevance to this article are the levels of Primitive Knowing and
Image Making. The term primitive is used not in the sense of low level or trivial,
but in the sense of " p r i m e ' m a s in both "important" and "previous". Primitive
Knowing is all the previously constructed knowledge, outside of the topic, that
students bring to the learning of a topic. Much of this knowledge will, of course, be
irrelevant to the task in hand, but it is only on existing understanding that new
learning can be built. When approaching the teaching of any topic, the teacher will,
consciously or unconsciously, assume that learners possess certain prior
understandings. For example, the teaching of fractions assumes a certain level of
understanding of the concept of number and an understanding of the four rules of
arithmetic. It m a y also assume knowledge of the w a y pizzas and other circular
objects are frequently partitioned. It is, however, unlikely to call upon the nature of
the weather on that particular morning. Yet all these understandings--the
sequencing of numbers, addition, halving a pizza by cutting through the diameter
in a straight line (as opposed to, say, cutting out a circle of radius equal to 70.7% of
the original radius), and the nature of sun and rainmare likely to form part of each
learner's Primitive Knowing. From this Primitive Knowing, appropriate knowledge
must be selected and used as a basis for growth of understanding.
130 Pirie & Martin
Folding Back
A key feature of the Pirie-Kieren theory is the idea that a person functioning at
an outer level of understanding will invocatively return to an inner level. The word
invocative (Kieren & Pirie, 1992) is used to describe a cognitive shift to an inner level
The Role of Collecting in the Growth of Mathematical Understanding 131
Collecting
It is the purpose of this paper to distinguish what we see to be a particularly
important form of folding back which we call collecting. The process of folding back
to collect entails retrieving previous knowledge for a specific purpose and re-
viewing or reading it anew in light of the needs of current mathematical actions.
Thus collecting is not simply an act of recall; it has the thickening effect of folding
back. In what follows we give examples of collecting, distinguish it from other
forms of understanding actions, and discuss how teachers might act to occasion
1We use the words "problem" and "solve" frequently in this article, but at no point are we
refering to the limited, specific activity that has come to be called problem solving in the
mathematics education literature. To enable people to solve problems throughout their
lives, not just those contrived problems set in mathematics lessons, is the reason that all
children are taught mathematics. For us, problem solving is simply working mathematically
when the route to the solution is not direct and immediately clear.
132 Pirie & Martin
Vignette 1
Jasmin: So, three take seven, can't do (pause) nine becomes eight, thirteen
take seven is six (pause) and eight take four is four, gives forty six.
Vignette 2
John: Hmm, three take seven ... (pause) Hang on, seven is bigger than
three, I can't do it, if it was seven take three it would be OK. (He
puts his hand up and the teacher comes over.) I can't do this 'cos seven
is bigger than three so you can't take it away.
Teacher: Could you do something to the nine and the three?
John: Hmm, no, I dunno, I can't do it.
Teacher: OK then, I'll get the rods and blocks and we'll make ninety three
and forty seven.
They then work with the Cuisenaire rods and use these to solve the problem.
Vignette 3
Paulo: Three take seven, can't do (pause) no, you can do something to the
nine and the three and borrow or tens it or something, lemme look.
(He opens his workbook and flicks through it.) Yeah, that's it, make the
nine an eight (pause) borrow ten so we get thirteen take seven is six.
Now the other bit is eight take four is four, forty six.
Jasmin has no difficulty in solving the question at all. She has the necessary
u n d e r s t a n d i n g instantly accessible a n d the process she uses is essentially
automatic. There is no necessity for her to fold back.
John cannot deal with this p r o b l e m at all. It is not clear whether he has m e t a
question like this before b u t cannot n o w solve it, or whether subtraction questions
of this type are n e w to him. W h a t is clear, however, is that either he does not h a v e
the necessary u n d e r s t a n d i n g or that his u n d e r s t a n d i n g is not well e n o u g h
The Role of Collecting in the Growth of Mathematical Understanding 133
developed to allow him to use it. Instead, prompted by the teacher, he folds back to
perform more image making, either to build a new image or to enhance an existing
one, perhaps by working on his image for subtractions where the unit subtrahend
is larger than the unit minuend. John needs to do more mathematical work at an
inner layer before he will be able to build for himself an algorithm to answer the
question, an algorithm that he can use with understanding.
We see something very different in Paulo's thinking about this problem. He too
cannot immediately solve the question--he does not have the understanding to use
an automated process in the way that Jasmin does. Neither, however, does he fold
back in the same way as John, to construct or modify an image. Paulo has an image
involving the reconceptualising of the numbers that he believes will allow him to
solve the question, but he needs to fold back to the level of Image Having in order
to retrieve this image, to re-view its properties in terms of the specific task at hand,
and then to use it. There is a sense of him having, and being aware that he has, the
necessary understandings but that they are just not immediately accessible. Thus,
he needs to fold back to his more basic understanding and in some way recollect--
that is to say, re-collect--it for use in his current thinking.
It is important to note that the process of collecting is a mental one. Although
here it is accompanied by Paulo searching his workbook, this is not essential to the
idea: It can equally be performed simply through the conscious searching of one's
thoughts. The workbook here is an aide-m~moire--it is not in itself his
understandings. Although initially it may appear that he has a lack of
understanding of subtraction, this is not actually the case; he was not looking for a
new idea to help him. After successfully re-collecting the image he needs, he is able
to correctly complete the question using his existing understanding of the concept.
His language allows us to assume that he is not blindly applying, by rote copying,
a given algorithm. He has recollected the understanding process which legitimates
his subsequent, algorithmic action of subtraction. The major difference between
this and the folding back of John is that the inner level activity of Paulo does not
involve a modification of his earlier understandings. His working involves him,
instead, in finding and recalling what he knows he needs to solve the problem. He
is consciously aware that this knowledge exists. He collects his inner
understanding and consolidates it through intentional use.
textbook). She collects the area of a circle formula, taking it back to the level of
image making where she attempts to continue working. In fact, though, she finds
that she cannot immediately use her formalised rule to find a numerical answer,
because the problem the teacher has posed gives no dimensions for the circle. In
this, her collecting differs from that of Paulo in that, having collected, she still has
to determine how she will use her understanding. Nonetheless, her response to
Kerry's final statement, "Just to make it easy", is evidence that she is now thinking
about the question of finding the area of a sector. She is seeing it as a portion of the
whole circle---that is to say, she is constructing an image for the notion of sector as
part of a circle and is intending to use her recollected understandings.
On closer inspection, we see that the images Kerry and Rosemary initially form
for a sector are interestingly different from one anothermat least partly because the
two students draw upon different primitive knowing. Rosemary's mention of "the
area section" has a marked effect on the thinking of Kerry and, probably as a
consequence of this student intervention, Kerry too folds back to her primitive
knowing. However, her shift appears more intentional: She goes directly to the
concept of the area of a triangle. Later conversation with Rosemary reveals that,
prior to folding back, she saw the sector as a triangular shape and attempted to
collect her understanding of triangular area in order to make it possible to work
with her image for the problem. She suggested working on a quarter circle to create
an "easy" right-angled, isosceles triangle. But for her too, the formula she needed
was not immediately applicable.
Both students collected inner understanding which they attempted to use to
increase outer understanding. But the knowledge and understandings they
collected resulted in differing images of a sector. Both girls folded back to collect on
the occasion of the given problem. Both then acted to reformulate previous
understandings into an understanding of a sector. But their collecting led them to
different understanding actions, just as their perceptions of the problem invoked
different collectings.
squared, knock off one h squared. Get h, h plus h squared. (She writes
h x h x h , crosses out h ×h in the numerator, and writes ~ .)
h + 2(h × h+ h2
S" Right, so h plus ... (he writes as they work)
A: h times h, so that's (inaudible) times h times h. Knock off hmm ....
S: See, I've got h plus h squared over h, that's still not right ....
A: It's exactly the same as it used to be, hmm. Well surely there's something
we can do with these, can't we? So it's still nothing divided by
something, you divide it by nothing, no it's nothing ....
T: Are you actually happy with what was going on here (pointing to
h × h × h )? 'Cos I wasn't quite clear what was going on.
h + 2(h ×
A: OK, we've got, on the top we've got h times h times h.
T: Yeah.
A: On the bottom we've got h plus h times h ... times h times h. (She now has
written: hx ~ .)
h+(hxh)+~
T: OK, I'm a bit unhappy about what's going on here. Why were you able
to cross that out with that (pointing to the earlier writing)?
A: Because that's what we did in maths a couple of days ago, what was it,
was it? Factorials? ... n over n minus r factorial factorial ... something like
that.
The teacher here has recognised t h e problem the students are h a v i n g and
initially validates 2 this by saying "'cos you don't k n o w h o w to divide by zero." She
m a k e s a n intentionally invocative intervention to get the students to fold back
again to their primitive knowing, but this time the teacher is able to give the
intervention a more explicit focus than the printed question h a d provided. She
asks, " C a n you do something to this? C a n you simplify that in some w a y ? " The
l a n g u a g e here is a p r o m p t to particular algebraic techniques. The w o r d "simplify"
seems to p r o v i d e the invocative trigger for A n n a n d Simon. They fold back to their
primitive k n o w i n g a n d collect from this inner layer their m e t h o d a n d
u n d e r s t a n d i n g s of algebraic manipulation, which they proceed to w o r k with while
trying to construct an image for the notion of limits. Unfortunately, it is evident
that their algebraic u n d e r s t a n d i n g which they collect is either incomplete or
i n a p p r o p r i a t e to the task at hand. Hence they will need further image making,
including other re-collecting, in order to proceed.
The teacher then makes two interventions which a p p e a r to have the aim of
p r o m p t i n g the students to do just this. She first asks, " A r e you actually h a p p y with
w h a t w a s going on here?" This intervention has the potential to be invocative
a l t h o u g h it is s o m e w h a t non-directional in nature, but it is not taken as invocative
a n d the students continue to w o r k in the same way. The second question, again
with invocative intent, is more explicit: " W h y were you able to cross that out with
that?" H a d the students been able to answer this question, it w o u l d have acted as a
validating question. Where the students are incorrect, it is reasonable to suggest
2The notion of validating is used here to describe an intervention which confirms the level of
understanding currently employed by the person.
138 Pirie & Martin
3 For obvious reasons, we do not have any data on her collecting acts when she is working
alone and therefore silently.
The Role od;Collecting in the Growth of MathematicaI Understanding 139
actually talking directly about the mathematics that she is trying to fold back to but
rather about the events of the lesson that surrounded that work and the physical
location of it. This referencing and collecting is again taking place in two stages.
Ann first describes the events of the lesson, then collects and states the label
"Pascal's triangle". When, after searching her memory she is still unable to find
exactly what she knows she needs, she tries, as Rosemary, Kerry, and Paulo did in
the earlier examples, to actually physically locate where she m a y find what she
knows she needs. She begins looking in her bag and her file for h e r notes from the
lesson to help her collect what she knows she needs. Although she can access the
general topic area she is aware that she is unable to precisely collect what is
required and calls on Simon's assistance, saying "Have you got your book with
you?" and later "You've got your folder, you might have your book" and later
again "... review sheet ... it might help you (sic) to work it out".
Throughout the rest of this episode, there is a sense of Ann moving in and out
of her primitive knowing as she retrieves more small pieces of mathematics to help
her. She seems to be trying to reconstruct a jigsaw puzzle of her understandings
piece by piece---in effect repeatedly saying to herself "if I knew such-and-such I
could probably act with u n d e r s t a n d i n g ' - - u n f i l the whole is ready to be used.
What Ann is gradually collecting is a relevant, if overly sophisticated, piece of
primitive knowing--namely, the expansion of binomial expressions. Finally the
teacher intervenes.
T: Right, I know what you're going for, and when you find it you'd be
right. But you're going an awfully difficult way round.
S: Yeah, complicated.
T: What you're going for is useful if you want x plus h to the eleventh,
rather a waste of time if you want x plus h squared. What does x plus h
squared mean?
S: It means x plus h ....
A: x plus h, argh! This is GCSE7 (very excited and laughing). So x squared plus
xh, plus hx plus h squared ....
S and A: So its x squared plus two xh plus h squared ....
A: (triumphantly) There you go.
T: Now, do you remember why you wanted that?
Even as the teacher speaks, Ann and Simon return immediately to the sheet of paper on
which they had been working.
The first intervention of the teacher here is in response to the difficulties the
students are having. Her comment is explicit and intentional, she wants them to
now fold back further, to their specific formalised understanding for quadratics.
The effect on Ann is quite startling, she suddenly folds even further back to the
image she has for the expansion of brackets term by term, and is able to quickly
and easily collect it. Again, though, she firstly describes it in terms of the label
attached to it--an event, in this case "GCSE". Having collected the image from the
inner layer, she is able to move back out with it to their image making for
differentiation from first principles and immediately and successfully use it to
7 The General Certificate of Secondary Education examination, which the students sat
eighteen months previously.
The Role of Collecting in the Growth of Mathematical Understanding 141
Limits
,.IM
\
Algebra
shift in her cognitive state which empowers her to continue to develop her outer
level understanding. Nonetheless, the importance of this shift in state, this
collecting, should not be minimised. Even her collecting involves recollecting
previous mathematical experiences and understanding, and creating a
contemporary use for them in a current act of understanding. This act obviously
shapes the understanding being currently built (the idea of a sector of a circle) but
also reshapes her previous understanding of circles.
With Ann, the situation is more complex. She shares the awareness of
Rosemary that she has the understanding she needs, but for her the process of
finding and collecting this understanding is problematic. The internal two stage
"filing system" she has created for her mathematical concepts certainly helps her to
do this, and at times the system is highly successful--although she relies quite
heavily on Simon to provide the precise mathematics. Ann's invoked collecting of
binomial manipulation shapes her ability to understand limits of functions, but it
also clearly changes and adds to her understanding of the binomial form of the
quadratic function. In contrast, Simon appears better able to fold back and collect
mathematical understanding, most particularly when prompted by Ann's
invocative location system. Simon does not appear to search his existing
understandings in the way that Ann does, but waits for her to provide him with a
prompt. Ann and Simon both have a good understanding of what they are doing
and what they need to do to be able to continue. Their problem lies in an inability
to effectively find, collect, and use the earlier concepts--the primitive knowing--
that they need. It would, of course, have been interesting to have followed these
students working with different partners, but unfortunately this was not possible.
How widespread is this technique of Ann's? Could teachers help students to
develop such reference systems? Certainly an important action when initially
working on any problem is to ask oneself "Have I seen a problem like this before?"
Although it might initially be hard for teachers to do this (since the mathematics
that they teach is likely to be, for them, at least at the formalising stage of automatic
recall), a conscious, frequent, overt modelling of "collecting" when working
examples in front of students would demonstrate the need and the power of such
mathematical activity.
The examples in this paper also clearly illustrate the fact that students
frequently return to textbooks or written notes to find what they know they need.
Although such texts do not constitute the understanding needed, they are certainly
a valuable aid to the cognitive processes involved in collecting. Thus a teacher who
promotes writing about one's understanding, careful reading of texts, and student
discussion indirectly provides the ground for such collecting.
This leads us to consider the effect and importance of teacher interventions in
helping students to fold back and collect when needed. The dilemma lies in
deciding the extent and explicitness of the interaction. In the case of Ann it was the
final invocative intervention of the teacher, explicitly directing her to fold back to
the precise piece of mathematics that she needed to collect, that enabled her to be
able to do this and then continue working. How specific should one be? How soon
should one intervene? Clearly, neither question can be answered in the form of
general advice and the teacher's motives for the students' undertaking particular
mathematical activities need to be considered in every case individually.
144 Pirie & Martin
One solution is to direct the students explicitly to what they need to do when
they are stuck. This is not the totally inappropriate intervention that it is sometimes
painted to be. If, as in the case of Ann, the student needs to be reminded of a
particular technique (in her case, multiplying out quadratics) then in order to allow
that student to progress in the building of a new concept, the provision of direction
as to what to collect may be beneficial. This parallels the w a y in which we allow
students to use calculators to enable them to focus on methods of analysis by
avoiding heavy arithmetic. What is important is that the students know that they
do have the necessary primitive knowing somewhere. In the long run, however,
although this would have the effect that the students could continue with the
specific problem, it would not lead to their developing personal strategies for
collecting--which is, we believe, an essential tool for solving any mathematical
problem that one might encounter. For those students who do not naturally
construct a well-developed facility to collect their earlier understandings, teachers
can provide valuable assistance through careful, sensitive interventions--
particularly pertinent questioning. If we are to enable students to become
autonomous problem solvers, then we have an obligation to make explicit to them
the need for and the skills involved in both folding back and in collecting.
Conclusion
Although mathematical understanding remains a complex and intensely
individual phenomenon, there are common key features underlying the cognitive
processes involved. Both the general practices of the teacher and the students, and
specific interventions by the teacher act to invoke collecting. A cognisance of the
fact that an apparent lack of understanding of the current mathematics may, in fact,
be due to something very different holds for teachers and students of mathematics
both the challenge and the opportunity to enhance the growth of mathematical
understanding through their actions. A teacher who is not only aware of the role
that collecting plays in the growth of understanding, but also realises that students
have different strategies and abilities for finding, collecting, and using their
previous understandings, is in a position to consider the sort of actions that m a y
best enable the process to take place.
Acknowledgment
The conference presentation by Pirie, Martin, and Kieran (1996) contained
some of the ideas in this paper.
References
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The Roleof Collecting in the Growthof Mathematical Understanding 145
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Walkerdine, V. (1988). The mastery of reason. London, England: Routledge.
Authors
Susan E. B. Pirie, University of British Columbia, Department of Curriculum Studies, 2125
Main Mall, Vancouver, V6T 1Z4, Canada. E-mail: <susan.pirie@ubc.ca>.