(Re)(con)figuring Space: Three Children’s Geometric Reasonings

Abstract

Despite decades of research revealing the importance of and need for developing students’ spatial reasoning skills, geometry receives the least attention in North American K-12 mathematics classrooms. This chapter focuses on three grade one children as they worked on a spatial-geometric task. The study as part of a larger research project inquired into the actual forms, activities and processes that constituted the children’s reasonings and geometry during the three episodes. The findings contribute to current early years research by further explicating the body’s role in the children’s spatial-geometric reasonings, the impact of these on their conceptions, and how geometry emerged as an ongoing creative process of (re) (con)figuring space. Key implications are considered regarding young children’s spatial-geometric reasoning in the mathematics classroom.