InforMath Collaborative

 

InforMath sought avenues for transforming cultural perceptions of mathematics in ways that broaden learners' access to the discipline.  The project addressed an issue of central importance to the field of STEM education: widespread cultural images of mathematics as an inscrutable domain available only to a small number of people of exceptional intelligence or innate capacity. Widely circulating cultural notions of mathematics as difficult and esoteric inflect many learners' experiences with this discipline and ultimately have the unfortunate potential to discourage participation in or identification with mathematics. To address this issue, this project explored two conjectures:

1. Educational interventions that:
   • merge mathematics and the arts; and,
   • engage learners? bodies, through movement, interaction, and multimodal perception, can productively broaden cultural views for what is regarded as mathematics.
     
     
2. The diverse array of institutions in the informal education sector has a unique potential to engage learners with specific mathematical content in novel ways.

This project investigated each of these conjectures in the context of the establishment of a new research center, the InforMath Collaborative, that brought together university educational researchers with art and science museum professionals. This collaborative, through design-based research on exhibits and programs, integrated existing content from participating art and science museums with mathematics

The InforMath Collaborative, based in San Diego, California, included five partner organizations: Balboa Park Cultural Partnership (BPCP), Fleet Science Center, Mingei International Museum, Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA), and CRMSE.

From this collaboration came a number of programs and museum exhibits.  A substantial portion of the exhibition and program development was conducted in the context of a professional development seminar led by senior project personnel, which we call the "lab".  The lab brought together SDSU faculty mathematics education researchers and participating museum staff representing a diversity of professional experience, including program developers, educators, and floor facilitators. Additionally, the design of the lab activities incorporated ideas from consulting professional development experts, refined through ongoing process evaluation by an external evaluator, and coordinated by the Balboa Park Learning Institute.  The labs were conducted over the course of an 8-month period during which participants explored mathematical ideas and collaboratively designed and implemented informal mathematics projects. The labs featured "investigations", which were hands-on activities and discussions that allowed deep exploration into mathematical concepts in topology and projective geometry. The labs engaged learners in the mathematical concepts and their relationships to visual art and science and the content for the labs was collaboratively developed by the SDSU researchers and museum staff.

From these labs, came a wide range of museum exhibitions and programs. They included:

Taping Shape and Taping Shape 2.0, two exhibitions at the Fleet Science Center provided an experience for visitors to explore topology, a field of study in mathematics that explores how surfaces can be stretched and deformed in space without being ripped or punctured. While Taping Shape explored core ideas in topology, Taping Shape 2.0 focused on knot theory, which studies how circles can be smoothly deformed in space to form different kinds of knots. The interpretive area of the exhibitions shared with visitors how mathematics inspired the physical nature of the structure and what makes it so strong.

Both installations were created with hundreds of rolls of packing tape that were unfurled and bound together to create a world of translucent spaces and tunnels for visitors of all ages to explore. Layers of conventional packing tape wrapped over installed scaffolding created sinuous branch-like forms. These branches were then covered inside and outside by layers of additional packing tape to bind the structure together, producing springy surfaces large enough to walk or crawl into. The network of cocooning passageways and rooms created smooth, continuous surfaces. Colorful lights added to the experience. Surfaces curved, sloped and twisted. The "floor" eased into the side of the structure, which gradually became the ceiling.

The Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) staff created an exhibition where they wove projective geometry and optics into their newly redesigned interactive gallery. The exhibition, Seeing is Believing? provided museum visitors with interactive viewers and activities to explore 3D images and the mathematics behind them. (Watch the videos "Seeing Depth" and "Creating Depth" below.)

Programs for elementary students and classroom teachers integrating mathematics and visual art were offered at Mingei International Museum. Mingei's workshops introduced students to weaving and curvature. Students studied objects in the museum's collection and engaged in hands-on activities to create their own woven and sewn objects. The Mingei program culminated in an exhibition with family and friends.

Both MOPA and Fleet Science Center developed programs for their visitors, including family photography workshops and a "Meet the Mathematician" series.

A summer institute (2016) developed and facilitated by Fleet Science Center, Mingei International Museum, MOPA, San Diego State and the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership for teachers to explore the relationships between mathematics and visual art.