RUME 27
2025
Alexandria, Virginia
Multi-Team Embodied Activity and Semiotic Games to Develop and Tune Meanings for Abstract Algebra Concepts
Page: 688
As students advance in undergraduate mathematics courses, the formal (e.g., textbook definitions and proofs) and informal (e.g., metaphorical) language they encounter becomes increasingly loaded. Additional work is needed to unpack how learners can engage in semiosis “meaning making” processes beyond surface marks, symbols, and verbiage. In this paper, we conduct semiotic bundle analyses to explore the potential of a full range of embodiments in meaning making. Our results show how embodiments can be leveraged in a more advanced abstract algebra setting to mediate semiotic conflicts between students’ and institutional/communal signs and expand meaning-structures. We present more specific meaning tuning and elaboration strategies that utilized embodiments and were identified during our analyses.