RUME 28
2026
Alexandria, Virginia
From the Polar to the Pole: The Enactive and Embodied Choreomathematics of the Polar Coordinate System
Page: 1365
Despite the fact that the Polar Coordinate System has affordances for graphing circular and rotational phenomena that the Cartesian Coordinate System simply does not have, students spend too little time engaged with it. The time they do spend is dominated by procedural tasks that deny them experiences that would enable them to appreciate its power. This poster presents design research in progress that seeks to discern the elements of an enactive educational ecosystem for emergent learning that enables learners to graph and reason within the PCS. Coordinated material and embodied interactions are emerging in preliminary findings that are enabling learners to make sense of the PCS by moving between it and the CCS as they coordinate the same varying quantities across those two worlds. The phenomenology of these interactions and the interactions themselves have implications for the design of experiences that enable learners to develop robust conceptions of the PCS.