ZDM (2018) 50:45–59

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-018-0926-4

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Modelling and the representational imagination

Corey Brady1

Accepted: 10 March 2018 / Published online: 20 March 2018

© FIZ Karlsruhe 2018

Abstract
This article examines the work of 30 in-service teachers engaged with modelling activities during a course within an Ecua-
dorian master’s degree program in mathematics teaching. These teachers experienced a sequence of activities designed
to explore imaginative aspects of mathematical modelling and problem solving, inviting perspectives from life outside of
school. They built rich connections between real-world phenomena and a range of ideas about functions and representations
of them. An analysis of the teachers’ work identifies a modelling resource—the representational imagination—describing
its nature and the implications for models of classroom modelling aiming to support this resource.

Keywords Modelling cycle · Perception · Linear function · Representational imagination

1 Introduction 2016; Brady, Eames, and Lesh 2015). In particular I focus

How can we provide learners with classroom experiences
that are authentic precursors of mathematical modelling
as practiced outside of school? For many years, research
within the Models and Modeling Perspective (M&MP) has
sought to understand the nature of modelling in real-world
settings and to improve the alignment of classroom experi-
ences with that reality (English and Gainsburg 2016; Lesh
and Doerr, 2003; Lesh, Hamilton, and Kaput 2007). How-
ever, researchers and teachers in the M&MP do not neces-
sarily seek to produce copies of professional settings within
classrooms. Instead, they aim to create experiences that
exhibit key aspects of professional practice, so that class-
room groups can experience what Lehrer & Schauble call
the “seeds of modeling.” (2015, p. 678). In other words, in
support of classroom learning through modelling, teachers
and researchers in the M&MP engage in a specific form of
second-order modelling: creating educational environments
that enact models of modelling practice.
This article comes out of collaborative work to explore
seeds of modelling as they can flourish in activities called
Model Eliciting Activities, or MEAs, and their extensions
to larger activity sequences called Model Development
Sequences, or MDSs (cf, Eames et al. 2018; Brady et al.
* Corey Brady
corey.brady@vanderbilt.edu
on how representations can play into modelers’ imagination
and perception of phenomena in the world, impacting how
they see these phenomena as targets for mathematizing. I
analyze the implementation of a sequence of three activities
with a group of in-service teachers, describing their work
and identifying features of a model of classroom modelling
that would account for their experiences.
2 Theoretical framework
This section describes principles of M&MP activity design,
in light of the goal to provide collaborative environments in
which students’ ideas develop iteratively through cycles of
modelling. It then identifies fundamental assumptions about
the interactions between models, modelling, imagination,
perception, and representations made in this article.
2.1 Dynamics of learning environments
that provoke a need for modelling
A distinctive challenge for classroom modelling is to design
problems where authentic seeds of modelling can grow in
ways that are deeply rooted in learners’ own personal expe-
riences and perspectives. In particular, an essential goal of
the M&MP is to establish a setting where ideas develop to
become “better”—more viable and effective in meeting the

1
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

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46 C. Brady

demands of particular situations—without providing an
authoritative image of an optimal, “best” solution.
How can progress occur without being directed toward a
specific end-goal? The M&MP argues that idea development
can follow dynamics analogous to those at play in Darwin-
ian evolution. Just as populations explore the space of an
ecosystem to identify and optimize their fitness for avail-
able “niches,” so the ideas of groups of students can explore
the conceptual space of realistic problems. In a Darwinian
model, the four factors of (1) diversity, (2) inter-communi-
cation, (3) selection, and (4) propagation in time are funda-
mental to evolutionary dynamics. M&MP researchers aim to
promote analogous dynamics in modelling activities.
The issues addressed in this study involve imaginative
connections that learners build between concepts within a
larger system of ideas. To investigate such matters, M&MP
researchers have found it necessary to attend to learner activ-
ity beyond the scope of single Model-Eliciting Activities.
Work in the last decade has addressed this need by formulat-
ing designs for Model Development Sequences (Arleback,
Doerr, and O’Neil, 2013; Doerr and English, 2003; Hjalmar-
son, Diefes-Dux, and Moore 2008; Lesh et al. 2003). Key
contributions include approaches for extending the model-
ling dynamics that Model-Eliciting Activities foster and for
unpacking and making explicit learners’ ways of thinking
(see also Brady, Eames and Lesh, 2015 for tentative design
principles).

2.2 Model-eliciting activities 2.3 Disciplinary seeing and “having a model”

Model-Eliciting Activities are a design tool to meet these
needs. They re-create important features of real-world
modelling and problem solving in compact form, while also
establishing conditions for evolutionary dynamics. They
engage small groups of (3–5) learners working in parallel
in a setting that provokes them to express and revise their
ways of thinking through rapid modelling cycles to produce
solutions for concrete but imagined clients (Lesh, Hoover,
Hole, Kelly, and Post 2000). Design research over decades
has refined this genre of tasks, distilling a set of six prin-
ciples (English et al. 2008; Kelly, Lesh, and Baec 2008).
Table 1 lists these principles, along with the dynamics of
idea-evolution that each promotes.
Implementations of Model-Eliciting Activities offer
M&MP researchers rich insights into the modelling process,
documented so as to provide a trail of evidence of learners’
changing ways of thinking. In turn, learners’ behaviors in
these activities raise questions and create the need for new
or revised concepts or tools at the researcher level.
The theory of modelling articulated by the M&MP aligns
with studies of modelling in STEM disciplines. In particular,
on the core notion of a model, the knowledge of discipli-
nary professionals is manifested in significant part through
their ways of seeing the world and creatively interpreting
phenomena. Goodwin (1994) refers to this as professional
vision and shows how such competences are learned through
effort and practice. Stevens and Hall (1998) illustrate how
apprenticeship relations support the development of specific,
instrumental ways of viewing the world, describing how
disciplined perception is cultivated. The M&MP accounts
for such features of professional practice in terms of par-
ticipants’ learning and adoption of core models of their dis-
cipline. Through this account, research on modelling can
connect professional practice with classroom learning that
focuses on model development, making claims about rela-
tionships between knowledge and perception. In particular,
in the M&MP view, a model is an interpretive system that
expresses and supports particular ways of seeing the world.

Table 1 Six design principles for model-eliciting activities (MEAs)

Principle How to know the principle is satisfied and how it promotes evolution

Reality principle Students make sense of the task, perceive it as meaningful, and draw on their own real-life experiences in solv-
ing it. This ensures groups of students bring diverse perspectives
Self-evaluation principle Students judge their in-process solutions on their own by assessing how useful they are to the “client” of the
MEA rather than asking the teacher or another “authority figure.” The client’s needs represent a selection
mechanism that ensures the survival of the most viable ideas
Model construction principle Students articulate a conceptual system (model) based in a particular way of looking at the problem situation.
In group work, different students’ models are put into communication with one another
Model documentation principle To mediate group-level discussion, students generate external representations of their thinking. This principle
also concerns communication and reproduction of models
Model generalizability principle Students show how to generalize their solutions to respond to a range of conditions the client may face. Such a
model occupies a space analogous to an ecological niche
Simplest prototype principle The MEA enters shared memory representing a kind of mathematical structure, and is invoked appropriately in
future problem solving. This ensures survival and propagation at longer timescales, analogous to the survival
of a species in evolution

13
Modelling and the representational imagination
“Having a model” thus involves reflectively adopting it as a
way of thinking. A model not only enables one to do things
in the world, it also enables one to see things in a particular
way. And adopting a new model (or refining a model) can
enable one to see the world in new ways (Lesh, Hamilton
and Kaput, 2007).
2.4 The constructive and imaginative roles
of representation
Representation systems are powerful, productive tools within
disciplinary practice that sustain acts of disciplined percep-
tion as described above. Professionals work to use, design,
and develop representations (cf., Latour 1999), not only to
express or communicate results but also during ideation and
to imaginatively generate new insights. That is, representa-
tions are not simply containers for the final products of sci-
entific modelling; they are tools for the active production of
knowledge. Ochs and colleagues provide one striking image
of this process, as groups of physicists use representations
to put themselves into their data and mentally reenact phe-
nomena from an embodied perspective (Ochs, Gonzales and
Jacoby 1996). Gooding (1990) illuminates another variety
of productive, imaginative modelling with representations
in Faraday’s notebooks. And Nersessian traces equally trans-
formative processes, both in Maxwell’s work (2010) and in
contemporary biomedical engineering labs (MacLeod and
Nersessian, 2018). Bridging professional and educational
contexts, Kaput and colleagues’ concept of a representa-
tional infrastructure (Hegedus and Moreno-Armella 2009;
Kaput 1994) illustrates the deep and active influence that
representations have on thinking and expressivity. Nemi-
rovsky and colleagues have shown that students, too, can
embody and animate graphical representations to maximize
their expressive potential for evoking and describing phe-
nomena (Nemirovsky, Tierney and Wright, 1998). Other
Fig. 1 “Seven step modelling
schema” (Blum 2015)
47
research has shown that in supportive settings, learners can
engage in sophisticated representational work analogous to
professional activity (diSessa et al. 1991). The construct of
co-action (Moreno-Armella and Brady, 2017) captures the
dynamic interplay between representation and conception
in dynamic, social environments, in both classrooms and
professional settings. Creatively wielding representations
to produce new perspectives on a real-world situation is a
powerful manifestation of the disciplinary capacity I refer
to as the representational imagination.
2.5 Locating the imagination in leading
descriptions of the modelling cycle
Aiming to foster a classroom environment in which seeds
of professional modelling can be taken up authentically
by groups of learners, I focused specifically on supporting
learners to build imaginative relationships with representa-
tions as they made sense of real-world phenomena. How
might innovations in this aspect of classroom modelling
impact models of modelling as a broader, holistic practice?
Fig. 1 shows Blum and colleagues’ (2015) influential depic-
tion of the modelling cycle (cf., English, Alrelback, and
Mousoulides 2016) as refined over decades of work.
In Blum’s schema, there is a clear demarcation between
the realm of “mathematics” and the “rest of the world,” and
modelling appears as an ordered sequence of discrete pro-
cesses or steps. A problem situation is first identified in the
real world (“real situation & problem”), appearing to the
modeller in a raw form that may not admit description by
mathematical representations. Through a shaping process
(1, 2), the situation is re-envisioned in a form amenable to
mathematizing (“real model & problem,” 3). This yields a
mathematical model (“mathematical model & problem”)
that is operated upon (4) to produce results (“mathemati-
cal results”). Then, these results produce interpretations or
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insights back into the world (5, “real results”). Finally, while
validating and examining implications (6, 7), inadequacies
of the original problem structuring or of the mathematiza-
tion may become salient, perhaps leading the modeler to
iterate the cycle.
2.6 Models of modelling in education research
and as education research
For this article, Blum’s (2015) model of modelling pro-
vokes reflection and insight by highlighting key mis-
matches between its schema and the experiences of teachers
I observed. This is an essential function for modelling in
and as education research. In the M&MP view, research-
ers’ models (of modelling) are subject to the same idea-
development processes as other models. Any model is an
interpretive system that both expresses and promotes a par-
ticular way of seeing phenomena in the world. Thus, part
of the power of Blum’s model is its clear articulation of
components of the modelling cycle: when important aspects
and connections in the teachers’ modelling work were not
represented there, those omissions became starkly salient.
3 Research questions
This study was guided by the following research questions:
1 How can a sequence of Model-Eliciting Activities sup-
port teacher-learners as they imaginatively explore the
space of possible mappings between mathematical rep-
resentations and the real world?
2 What model of classroom modelling would be needed to
account for the role of the representational imagination
observed in these teachers’ experiences?
4 Data and methods
This article presents one episode from a longer program of
design-based research (Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer and
Schauble 2003) studying interactions among group-centered
activity design, modelling, and representational expressivity
in mathematics. The larger effort has explored imaginative
work using Model Eliciting Activities with learners of vary-
ing ages and instructional settings (cf Brady, 2013; Brady
et al. 2017). In this section, I describe key features of this
implementation, the data collected, and the analysis.
4.1 Implementation context
The data analyzed here were collected during an inten-
sive 1-week course in a master’s degree program in
13
C. Brady
mathematics teaching. Participants were 30 teachers
attending a public university in a medium-sized city in
Ecuador and comprising the program’s second cohort. The
course consisted of 24 h of classroom time during 1 week
of intensive in-person instruction, followed by an indi-
vidual writing project that extended over the subsequent
month. In-person sessions occurred on weekday evenings
and one Saturday. Each day’s schedule included a pair of
2-h blocks with a half-hour meal break. Twenty-eight of
the teachers were currently active classroom teachers dur-
ing the day, and several travelled 2 h or more to attend
each class session. In spite of these challenges, attendance
was nearly perfect, with no participant missing a full block
on any one of the days.
The rationale for pursuing the research questions above
in this context was as follows. The setting enabled me
to engage with teachers prepared to think deeply about
modelling but for whom both Model Eliciting Activities in
general and the particular activities I selected were novel.
As such, participants experienced these activities fully
both as learners and as teachers. As learners, they grap-
pled with modelling. As teachers, they adapted an existing
activity, developed an original one, and created a shared
rubric for evaluating group-centered activities in light
of the theories of the course. Participants’ work across
student and teacher roles afforded rich insights into their
thinking, both as modellers and as reflective practitioners
engaging with the nature of modelling.
Instruction occurred exclusively in Spanish. How-
ever, since interactions between linguistic resources and
mathematical constructions are not central to the current
analysis, I present the activities and work samples in Eng-
lish translation. At the same time, language and cultural
context were significant in the course. “Translation” itself
was a useful theme-to-problematize for us: in the course
I encouraged flexible adaptation of ideas and techniques
as teachers reflected on whether and how to adopt them.
This gave me additional insights into teachers’ views on
the nature of modelling.
Cross-cutting themes of the course included an empha-
sis on functions and on technology supports for collabora-
tive group work, dynamic representations, and visualiza-
tion. These themes significantly influenced my design and
the array of activities that I selected in advance for pos-
sible inclusion in the course. I taught adaptively, choosing
activities from this larger set based on the participants’
thinking, challenges, and interests. The conceptual frame
of Model Development Sequence design supported my
decisions about sequencing activities to support learners in
drawing connections among ideas (see also, Brady, Eames
and Lesh 2015).
Modelling and the representational imagination
4.2 Selection of episodes and analysis of data
My analysis focuses on three activities where participant
teachers were engaged as learners:
1 The Bigfoot Problem (Lesh and Harel 2003; Middleton,
Lesh, and Heger 2003), which was the core Model Elic-
iting Activity of the sequence and hinged on learners’
inferences from ill-structured “forensic” data.
2 The Motion Stories activity, which involved learners
in creating coordinated trios of (a) narratives involving
motion; (b) bodily enactments of those stories; and (c)
Cartesian graphs capturing the motion involved in the
story and enactment (Brady, 2013).
3 The Drills and Skills Problem (Lesh, Middleton, Caylor,
and Gupta 2008), which asked learners to generate an
explanatory story about relationships in bivariate student
assessment data.
I had used each of these activities on multiple prior occa-
sions in teaching and research. In this study, however, I
aimed to see how they might interact, to support imagina-
tive uses of Cartesian representations and the linear function.
Across these activities, data collected included captures of
electronic artifacts; scans of paper-based artifacts; digital
video clips and photos of small-group work; and reflective
notes.
My analysis focused attention on the representational
imagination: on how imaginative uses of representations
could support modeling. More specifically, I was guided
by the literature on representational expressivity (Hegedus
and Moreno-Armella, 2009) and to a lesser extent represen-
tational fluency (e.g., Cramer, 2003). These lenses framed
not only my analytical approach but also the course design,
my selection of activities, and my in-the-moment decisions.
It is my assumption that, as both teacher and researcher in
this context of the course, they significantly structured my
perceptions and interpretations of the teachers’ work. Never-
theless, while my initial analytical categories were grounded
in these literatures, I also aimed to allow the data to speak, to
reveal connections and configurations of ideas that I did not
anticipate (or fully appreciate in my in-the-moment teach-
ing). Accordingly, I followed a constant comparison method
(Glaser 1965) in examining and analyzing the data.
To impose interpretive checks on my analysis, and to sup-
port generalization and synthesis with the broader M&MP
understanding of learning through modelling, I drew in two
colleagues for interpretive discussions and review. Together
we had earlier produced an account of the adaptive design
of the entire course and a set of tentative design principles
for Model Development Sequences (Brady, Eames, and Lesh
2015). For this article I returned to a segment of the course
where issues of representation, perception, and imagination
49
were foregrounded. I reviewed the data reflecting the work
of all participants in the class, coding and categorizing by
emerging theme. I prepared for sense-making discussions
with my two colleagues, using these artifacts and my teach-
ing notes to create interpretive memos (cf, Hatch 2002).
Talking through my notes and responding to my colleagues’
questions, I developed a written narrative re-construction,
which I shared with them and iteratively elaborated.
The analysis here focuses on student artifacts that were
significant to the class’s discussion and that illustrated what
I perceived at the time and on reflection as important themes
and ways of thinking of the group. I make no claim that
all of the teachers’ ways of thinking are represented here;
rather, highlighted work illustrates ways of taking up the
activities that were influential to the unfolding of the course.
These accounts also resonated with my colleagues’ extensive
experience with these and similar activities, and their sense
of how ideas develop in Model Development Sequences.
The result is a synthetic account that illustrates paradigmatic
ways of engaging these activities, expressed in the particular
work of members of this class. In the following three sec-
tions, I describe the focal activities of the analysis, along
with the conjectures that guided me to include them in the
course.
4.3 The Bigfoot problem
The Bigfoot Problem surfaced issues of representation,
perception, and modelling that carried through the course.
Moreover, learners encountered linear functions in Bigfoot
in an unexpected way that set the tone for their later work
(Fig. 2).
Prior research framed my expectations for the problem.
I expected that initial conceptions of the problem would be
fragmented and incoherent, but that diversity of thinking
within groups would provide a foundation for the evolution
of ideas. I also expected a focus on the needs of the client
(the Cub Scout troop) to enable groups to assess their solu-
tions and push themselves to refine their thinking. Finally,
I hoped that learners would imaginatively integrate “big
ideas” from several mathematics domains (e.g., Geometry,
through proportionality and/or similarity; Algebra, through
the use of linear functions; and Statistics through the core
problem of inference and issues about validity in such infer-
ence). Further, as Middleton, Lesh, and Heger (2003) argue,
learners’ solutions often engage areas outside of mathemat-
ics since Bigfoot stands at the “nexus of numerous poten-
tial communities of practice…. In such a task, the child’s
activity is at once fully mathematical, fully journalistic and
fully forensic science, affording an entrée, or potential iden-
tification with each of the communities to which the task
appeals.”
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50 C. Brady

Fig. 2 Statement of the Bigfoot

The Bigfoot Problem
Problem (English version)
A Cub Scout troop has been doing a project at a local park. Last weekend, they noticed as
they were leaving that the old brick drinking fountain had started to leak. They mentioned the
problem to a Park Ranger, who shut it off.

This week, they are back. Arriving early in the morning, they noticed that the drinking fountain
had been fixed. But this was a surprise to the Ranger: Apparently someone had fixed it after
the park closing time the night before!

The scouts and the Ranger agree that it would be great to be able to thank the people who
fixed the water fountain. But all they could find were lots of muddy footprints.

One set of footprints was distinctive – extremely large. A full-sized model of these footprints is
shown on the floor of your classroom in the same arrangement that they were found in the
park. The scouts and the Ranger feel that this is the person they would like to know more
about. To find this person and his or her friends/associates, it would help if they could figure
out how big he or she really is.

Your task is to help the scouts by making a “how-to toolkit” — a step by step procedure that
they can use to figure out how big people are by looking at the footprints they leave behind.
Your toolkit should work for footprints like the ones that the group has found, but it should also
work for other footprints.

4.4 The motion stories activity 4.5 The drills and skills problem

This activity involved learners in creating narratives, graphs,
and physical enactments of motion stories. Calculator-based
distance sensors enabled learners to construct graphs of their
own bodily movement. An initial exercise using the fable of
The Tortoise and the Hare introduced these tools and the
basic idea of a motion story. Based on the moral of that story
(“Slow and steady wins the race”), participants enacted the
Tortoise’s motion and described the results with function
models. In the main activity, participants envisioned pos-
sible stories and possible motions that could be modelled by
Cartesian graphs. They used their own bodies to enact them,
iteratively refining their stories, their bodily performances,
and their graphs to create an ensemble of representations
that satisfactorily expressed the narrative they imagined.
As with Bigfoot, prior research framed my expectations.
A related activity sequence formed part of my dissertation
study. Over the course of that study, learners (1) demon-
strated greater correctness in their constructions, as judged
by an improved match between coordinated representations;
(2) exhibited increased confidence in graphing, as judged
by the number of students choosing to include “ambitious”
graphical features in their narratives (e.g., pauses and
changes of direction); and (3) adopted more balanced class-
room participation patterns, as judged by the fact that “inclu-
sion” students (not identified in advance to the researcher)
participated in activities requiring public physical perfor-
mance to an equal or greater degree than their general-edu-
cation classmates (Brady 2013). I included Motion Stories
in the activity sequence to explore graphical and other rep-
resentations as tools for imaginative and simulation-based
reasoning about the world.
Finally, teachers encountered the drills and skills problem
(Lesh, Middleton, Caylor, and Gupta 2008), which combined
(a) the challenge to “see a story” in a function graph, with
(b) the goal of making inferences from data. Teachers con-
sidered a data set describing the relation between the number
of minutes per week that schools dedicated to practice for a
high-stakes exam and those school’s average performance. A
table and scatterplot showed results from 26 schools.
The scenario was that a school board was preparing to
meet to determine regional policy for practice time, and they
wanted plausible interpretations of their data. Six different
function models were provided to explain the data, including
a linear function. The linear model was accompanied by a
letter to defend it (Fig. 3).
The teachers were asked to evaluate this linear model
and the letter’s “story” of student learning. They were then
asked to select three alternative models from the five non-
linear models provided. For each, they wrote letters explain-
ing the trend proposed by the model, justifying them with
alternative stories of learning through drill and practice. I
conjectured this activity would resonate particularly with
the teachers’ own professional lives, provoking imaginative
identification with the problem and raising the perceived
stakes of adopting different models of learning.
5 Results
In this section, I present teachers’ work on the three activi-
ties, focusing on imaginative relations between representa-
tions, perception, and modelling.

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Modelling and the representational imagination
Dear School Board Members,
For every extra minute that students spend on
drill, their test score should be expected to
increase at a steady rate. So, as more time is
spent of drill, the trend should look like a straight
line. For example, if students spend 90 minutes
per week on drill, then my graph shows that the
average test scores should be about 65.
Sincerely,
Sam Straight
Fig. 3 Linear model, from the drills and skills problem
5.1 Bigfoot
As the Bigfoot problem unfolded, a range of thinking
emerged. The 10 groups’ approaches were consistent with
findings reported by Lesh and Harel (2003) and other set-
tings where I have used the problem. Groups made varying
degrees of progress in mathematizing the situation. Of those
that formulated quantitative inferences, most focused on Big-
foot’s height, though some also attempted to infer a weight.
Inferences were based on a variety of comparisons (with
the length of the shoe-print, the width of the shoe-print,
the length or average length of strides, or combinations of
these). The most common procedure was to set up a propor-
tion of some kind between Bigfoot’s known measurements
and corresponding reference measurements. Some groups
chose a single reference exemplar (a member of their group,
a particular student of the class, or in one case, myself, since
I was “another North-American” as this group conjectured
Bigfoot was), while others took a sample of group members
or other classmates. Upon establishing a reference ratio,
Fig. 4 a Diagram from Group
3’s solution, using proportion-
ality of bodies taking strides.
b Group 4’s procedure, using
proportionality of foot size and
testing several comparison cases
51
many groups then employed “la regla de tres” (“the rule
of three,” a proportion-based equation with one unknown).
This procedure appeared to have strong authority across the
class as a tool for making the desired inference.
Example solutions in Fig. 4, give an idea of the diversity
of quantitative approaches in the class. Figure 4a shows an
elaborate geometric structure of interrelated proportions that
models the motion of walking, using a figure consisting of
an isosceles triangle (the legs during a stride) with an exten-
sion of the altitude (the torso and upper body). In contrast,
Fig. 4b shows a more abstract and aggregate perspective to
the part-whole relation, inferring simply that a proportional
relation of foot-lengths would apply to the heights of the
bodies as a whole.
The groups’ presentations and the ensuing discussions
were rich occasions to explain and compare strategies.
Intending to intensify a focus on the role of representations
in their thinking, I asked the class how we might use a
Cartesian graph to depict different solutions. The question
aimed to extend the class’s modelling work, prompting a
The foot-length of a 1.68 m tall person is
29cm. Then, since the foot length of the
mystery person is 37cm, their height would be
2.14m.
We compared this too with the result using the
height of the professor, which is 1.82m, and
his foot-length is 32cm. Here we found that
the probable height of the mystery person is
2.10m.
We then compared a man of 1.68m with a
woman of the same height. Women –
generally – have smaller feet. For this reason,
we think the mystery person is a man….
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graphical interpretation of the rule-of-three procedure that
had been so frequently used. In particular, with Group 4’s
measurements
29 x
= briefly. I asked what lines might be used to represent data
168 y
Thus,
29y = 168x,
or
168
y=
29
x.
Figure 5 shows a reconstruction of the group’s proce-
dure in graphical form.
Within the graphical interpretation, the rule of three
implicitly defines a line passing through the origin, with
slope determined by the single point expressing the ref-
erence data (here, a foot length of 29 cm and a height
of 168 cm). Moving along that line to the x-location of
Bigfoot’s known measurement (here, a 37 cm foot length)
identifies a point expressing Bigfoot’s inferred height
(here, 214 cm).
Fundamental questions about the graphical interpreta-
tion quickly became the center of the class’s attention. The
group had an (unanticipated) asset that helped to raise the
question of outliers and other features of a linear model
through the origin. Susana (a pseudonym), the 6-year-old
daughter of one of the participants, attended all of the
course sessions with her mother, playing quietly in the
room. While doing the Bigfoot problem, her mother’s
group collected Susana’s data. During the whole-class
discussion, Susana’s measurements created an occasion
to reason about the variability of the lines corresponding
to different reference data with changes or measurement
errors. What kinds of variation would appear when the
reference individuals were still-growing children, normal-
sized adults, or outliers (big or small)? Thinking about
this seemed particularly relevant to some class members,
Fig. 5 Graphical interpretation of Group 4’s rule-of-three procedure
13
C. Brady
because the clients of the activity were Cub Scouts (i.e.,
still-growing boys).
Questions about the validity of a linear model through the
origin, implicit in the rule-of-three calculations, also arose
from the whole class (referring to a whiteboard sketch of
data that might be formed if the groups all took comparable
measurements of their bodies). When the idea of “best fit”
lines not passing through the origin emerged, some argued
that a model that did not pass through the origin was prob-
lematic or nonsensical. In the extreme, how could someone
have a foot size of zero inches, but a non-zero height? Per-
haps no single linear model could be used to make credible
inferences over the entire interval of possible foot sizes. This
idea was supported by another participant’s comment: one of
the groups had apparently looked up population-normative
online charts and tables relating height and weight in order
to infer Bigfoot’s weight, based on the height they had cal-
culated. This weight-height relation was not linear.
Thus, while the Bigfoot MEA engaged the class in gen-
erating powerful models to support inferences from data,
the class became uncomfortable with aspects of their own
solutions in light of their graphical representations. The
proportional techniques they had used involved “hidden
assumptions” about the nature of the data being described.
These (linear) models had consequences that ran counter
to the teachers’ intuitions or, at the very least, explanatory
entailments that the teachers had not consciously invoked.
5.2 Motion stories
The Motion Stories activity placed representations, phe-
nomena, and linear models in new relations to one another.
In the episode of The Tortoise and the Hare, Susana, our
6-year-old participant, volunteered to play the tortoise. She
produced the graph in Fig. 6a, below, which the class imme-
diately agreed “was a line.” This provided both an example
of effective theatre (“Great Tortoise!”) and an opportunity
to investigate the mathematical significance of the teachers’
perception that the graph was a line.
I distributed a calculator file containing Susana’s data and
asked each teacher to manually manipulate a line so that it
“imitated” Susana’s motion. I collected their screens and
displayed the aggregate. The class observed that they had
chosen different approaches to fit a linear function to the
Tortoise’s data. There were thus multiple possible senses
in which the motion “was a line,” reflecting different math-
ematical ways of seeing and yielding different modelling
value.
A first approach (Fig. 6b) focused on the start and finish
of the race, ensuring that the line agreed with the motion
there, neglecting the “middle” portion. A second approach
(Fig. 6c) ignored the initial segment of the graph in which
Modelling and the representational imagination
the Tortoise was stationary (due to Susana’s reaction time),
and instead fit a line to her movement in the remainder of
the race.
In discussion, the group found the first line generated a
measure of an average speed and might be most useful in
determining a winner. The second line showed “full” speed
and might be better for measuring Tortoise’s running abil-
ity or predicting how she would fare in a longer race. In this
discussion teachers began to describe the linear function as
a graphical measuring tool.
The main section of the activity further encouraged the
teachers to see Cartesian graphs in terms of expressive
stories about motion and to explore relationships between
narratives, motion, and graphs. Working in groups of three,
each teacher composed a narrative of motion and physically
Fig. 6 a Captured motion of Susana the “Tortoise.” b, c Two teachers’ linear fits
Fig. 7 Teacher acting out
her story-graph as her two
classmates record and critique
the captured graph (note, she is
reading from her ‘script’ as she
enacts the story)
Fig. 8 Examples of student-collected motion graphs. Each is accompanied by a narrative
53
enacted their story, collaborating with groupmates to capture
the graph with calculator-based sensors (Fig. 7).
A selection of teachers’ graphs is shown in Fig. 8. They
explored the space of possibility delimited by the technol-
ogy, the representational space of graphs, and their bodies.
For instance, the distance sensors had a maximum range
of about 4m: beyond that, the signal became noisy, creat-
ing graphs that many found unappealing. This added a con-
straint to the enactment of stories, which needed to be scaled
(or edited). Other stories needed to be re-imagined when
authors realized that a motion that could be represented by
this kind of graph must be one-dimensional. In addition,
some groups found that they could not physically achieve the
visual effects they wanted in the graphical representation.
For example, the story of Graph 9c depended on a sharp
13
54
contrast between the character’s slow outward-bound motion
and their rapid return “home.” However, it is difficult to walk
quickly backwards. To achieve the desired effect, the group
manipulated the physical enactment: they had the “camera
person” move toward the “actor” as the actor also moved
backward (beginning at the ‘peak’ at t = 6 s).
Finally, in a “story for another’s graph” task, teachers
experienced the polysemy of graphs, comparing the stories
that groups generated based only on the graph of a motion
story. These activities explored potential mappings between
Cartesian graphs, stories, and physical enactments of those
stories. As one teacher wrote in her reflective commentary:
“[T]odos estos conceptos ya adquiridos y que permanecían
en nuestro interior, se reforzaron mucho más con esta activi-
dad” (All these concepts [of position, velocity, space, and
time] that we had already acquired and that remained inside
of us, were reinforced much more with this activity.)
5.3 Drills and skills
The drills and skills problem gave teachers an opportunity
to work with function models of bivariate data sets in terms
of the “stories” that these function were “trying to tell”
about the data. It thus extended themes from both Bigfoot
and Motion Stories activities. Like Bigfoot, it connected to
issues with inference beyond the range of known data, and
like the Motion Stories work, it prompted the teachers to
see graphs as telling stories that reflected perceptions and
assumptions.
To start, teachers considered the merits and limitations of
a linear model (Fig. 3, above). Looking at the graph alone,
they did not immediately find the account problematic, but
on reading the letter they began to identify serious issues
with the view of learning it proposed. It quickly emerged as
a caricature of the relationship between practice time and
achievement. For instance, one teacher noted that this model
would predict a score of over 100% given unlimited practice.
The student begins from prior knowledge, or an
initial state of fluency and practice. From this
point, their performance grows as a function of
time [on practice], until it reaches a maximum,
after which their performance levels off and
becomes constant. That is, if they practice
more, there is no longer an improvement in
performance. Thus, it would be necessary to
work on other learning activities to improve
performance [further].
Fig. 9 Arguing for a model that rises asymptotically to a maximum
13
C. Brady
The class then broke into groups, to generate alterna-
tive accounts of how practice time might more plausibly
be predicted to affect learning. They then chose three of
six alternative graphs and wrote letters to articulate the
account that they expressed. Finally, they identified the
account that was closest to the one that they had produced
in their own discussion.
My translations of selections from three groups’
responses are shown below (Figs. 9, 10, 11).
6 Discussion
Each of these three activities supported learners in engag-
ing imaginatively with Cartesian representations in rela-
tion to linear function models, foregrounding the represen-
tational imagination as a generative modelling resource. In
this section I review how the representational imagination
appeared in the teachers’ work and how a model of class-
room modelling might account for it.
In Bigfoot, the Cartesian representation spurred imagi-
nation and reflection about phenomena that provided a jolt
to the thinking of the group—unsettling their confidence in
la regla de tres and opening a conversation about different
ways of expressing patterns in the relations of foot sizes
or stride lengths to heights. In Motion Stories, the Carte-
sian graph was the site of an invitation to invent and enact
narratives about motion, and an environment for imagin-
ing and describing possible motions. Finally, in Drills and
Skills, teachers drew on their professional sense of how
learners benefit from skills practice to imagine the stories
implied in Cartesian graphs modelling that relationship,
using representational imagination to critique some mod-
els and endorse others.
Modelling and the representational imagination 55

When a student increases his

practice time, at first his
performance increases notably,
until it reaches a maximum point.
After this point, due to factors such
as physical and mental fatigue, his
performance tends downward.

Fig. 10 Arguing for a model that rises to a maximum and then declines (note, this group also limited the domain of application of the model by
cropping the image)

We believe that if the students increase

their study in 20-minute intervals, their
achievement will be greater, with the
recognition that their maximum
achievement will occur when they study
approximately 60 minutes per week….
If they study more than 60 minutes, the
results will deteriorate a little, due to
fatigue, to a point, but they will maintain
that lower level indefinitely. Thus, we
predict that even with 120 minutes of
practice the achievement will be 60%.

Fig. 11 Arguing for another model that rises to a maximum and then declines, also raising the idea that classroom practice sessions occur in
definite time intervals

6.1 Problematizing to learn amid diversity
Across these activities, teachers were challenged to explore
function descriptions that went beyond linear models. At the
same time, linear models remained powerful and relevant
in these broader accounts. Specifically, in each activity,
teachers (a) experienced linear models’ failure to capture
important aspects of a phenomenon of interest, while at the
same time (b) saw their value as tools to build more refined
explanations. In Bigfoot, when the authoritative rule of three
method was seen to be built upon a linear function through
the origin, its limitations became clearer to the teachers,
and “fixes” to the model (e.g., adjusting the domain, apply-
ing different rules in different intervals) were suggested. In
Motion Stories, the line appeared as a powerful tool—a spe-
cial case of simple motion—that could be used for measur-
ing velocity-as-slope in more complex graphs. And in Drills
and Skills, the linear function acted as a “straw man” model
that provoked alternatives and against which alternatives
demonstrated their value.
Thus, engaging with phenomena and models that were
not linear fostered powerful learning about linear func-
tions. This idea is in keeping with research on the quali-
tative calculus (cf, Stroup, 2002), and the present study
suggests a general design principle, which could apply to
modelling more broadly. Namely, when using modelling to
investigate a mathematical concept (e.g., linear function),
it can be desirable to pose problem settings where learners
encounter the limitations of that concept. That is, design-
ers should consider situations where learners recognize the
need to go beyond target concepts as occasions to build deep
understandings of those very concepts. This is because in
such situations, (a) target concepts can be seen as in fact
embodying a model (rather than simply expressing a “right”
answer or approach); (b) they can be seen in the context of
an entire space of possible models and can be connected

13
56
with those other models; and (c) their limitations can be
understood clearly along with their merits. Thus, while it
may seem counterintuitive to design an activity where the
target knowledge is ultimately problematized, such activi-
ties can help learners to build connected understandings that
integrate target ideas.
Finally, an emphasis on problematizing the central topics
of study also suggests learning designs that make use of the
diversity of thinking in classrooms. Faced with realistically
complex settings, a group of learners will reliably conceptu-
alize these settings in a variety of contrasting ways, leading
to substantively different mathematizations. Some activity
designs, intending to highlight the aptness of linear mod-
els for phenomena in the world, simplify those phenomena
or otherwise diminish the range of ways of seeing them as
non-linear. In contrast, activities like the ones analyzed here
suggest that this diversity can be a powerful design resource,
provoking and harnessing the representational imagination
at the group level. Research illustrating how diversity of
thought drives innovation in collective idea development
thus underscores the value of problems that problematize.
6.2 The representational imagination
as a meta-modelling resource
Representations are not simply the endpoints or products
of processes of mathematization; rather, a learner’s sense
of their expressive potential can participate actively in her
perception of the real world as embodying mathematics. In
this study, teachers shifted their orientation to functions that
modelled data, in activities that fostered imaginative and
narrative-based approaches. Moreover, their imaginative
uses of functions provoked awareness that such models are
models—interpretive tools that simultaneously describe and
shape phenomena.
Fig. 12 Seven step modelling
schema (Blum 2015; reproduces
Fig. 1)
13
C. Brady
In Bigfoot, the rule of three began for the teachers as
an authoritative tool to make inferences about Bigfoot (an
unproblematic lens to look with), but it became a problem
and a focus of attention in itself (a set of assumptions to look
at) when it was represented graphically. The representational
shift pushed learners to reconsider fundamental aspects of
their solution strategies, raising questions and insights about
the problem situation and the phenomena being modelled. In
Motion Stories, teachers explored the range of motion phe-
nomena that could be captured by position-time and other
motion graphs. The activity “reversed the arrow” typical
of the modelling cycle, encouraging learners to use graphs
to envision phenomena that would be interesting or mean-
ingful. Thus, representations acted as tools for generating
stories in and about the world. In Drills and Skills, a linear
model’s account of a dataset reflected a narrative with some
of the limitations that they had encountered in Bigfoot. As
teachers created alternative accounts using alternative func-
tion models, they made arguments for the “fit” of graphs
specifically in terms of the plausibility of the “stories” those
graphs told about a familiar context of teaching and learning.
In each case, engaging imaginatively with representations
provoked meta-cognitive activity about important facets of
the practice of modelling.
6.3 The representational imagination and models
of modelling
This analysis focused on learners conceptualizing real situa-
tions. Blum’s (2015) schema (see Fig. 12) centers this activ-
ity in step 1: there, modellers create a “situation model” prior
to and independent of activating their sense of the expressive
potential of particular mathematical models (in step 3). In
contrast, this study has explored how learners’ diverse pre-
existing ways of thinking and their experiences with rep-
resentational tools can lead them to see real situations in
Modelling and the representational imagination
very different ways, which condition their modelling work.
This would suggest breaking down the sharp divide between
“mathematics” and the “rest of the world;” making arrows
between these domains bidirectional; and considering ways
in which one’s history with each of the arrows might affect
one’s conduct in all of them. Further, modellers can use rep-
resentational tools to imagine a range of phenomena in the
real world that can be captured by those representational
tools. This imaginative work helps to condition their ways
of seeing, and it supports them in the thoughtful production
of mathematizations. Imaginative seeing with representa-
tions can also support learners’ critical “readings” of their
own models or models created by others. (This is related to
arrows 5 and 6.)
The teachers’ work described here also suggests how
interactions among a group’s diverse ways of thinking-with-
representations offer powerful resources as they collabora-
tively develop solutions that explore the conceptual space of
realistic problems, a feature difficult to describe in a schema
that depicts a single thinker’s modelling cycle. Specifically,
the diagram tends to hide the value of a class’s collective
diversity of thinking, in which idea generation and develop-
ment follows an evolutionary metaphor. In a setting where
many acts of imaginative mathematizing are occurring, an
even richer ecosystem of ideas and models can be cultivated.
In the ICME-12 paper (Blum 2015), from which the dia-
gram above is taken, Blum advances Kaiser and colleagues’
(2006) notion of mapping modelling research according to dis-
tinctive perspectives (each characterized by its aims and suit-
able reference example activities). The M&MP, as described
here, does not seem to fit neatly into any of the perspectives
Blum lists (which include applied, educational, socio-critical,
epistemological, pedagogical, and conceptual perspectives),
though clearly there are connections with several of these.
With the activity sequence described here as an instance, I
would propose adding a meta-modelling perspective to the list.
Here, a central aim in introducing modelling experiences is
to offer learners insight into modelling as a situated, interpre-
tive practice where different groups of modellers mathematize
real-world phenomena differently. Such experiences illustrate
how goals, values, and knowledge radically affect modelling
and the criteria one develops for a satisfactory model; and the
diversity in a classroom’s approaches shows how modelling
operates relative to these factors. Activities that serve as exam-
ples of this perspective include Model-Eliciting Activities,
whose design principles ensure that different groups’ solutions
will reflect different ways of perceiving and mathematizing the
problem situation. Only by experiencing and making sense of
this diversity and its roots in a range of different underlying
models can the meta-modelling objectives of these activities
be realized. Understanding the nature of modelling as an inter-
pretative act is thus a core component of the sense-making that
can occur in these activities (cf. Blum 2015, pp. 82–3). And
57
while many other perspectives on modelling do aim to support
learners’ meta-cognition, the M&MP is particularly insistent
on a reflective view of modelling itself, provoking teachers and
learners to engage with these issues.
6.4 Limitations and future work
This study explored connections teachers made between phe-
nomena in the world and Cartesian representations of those
phenomena. Though the teachers’ work does provide evi-
dence that rich learning occurred, this study did not assess
the teachers’ learning of functions, graphical interpretation,
or modelling. Instead, it sought to highlight rich features of
their modelling experience that could support deep learning
in these areas. Moreover, even though the learning context
was a sequence of activities that can be applied with second-
ary school students, it is not a curricular unit that could be
used absent other approaches for introducing functions and
their graphs, nor does it suggest a single best form for such a
unit. In this way, this study is clearly preliminary, and future
work could carry these directions forward.
The study setting was deliberately selected to offer a dif-
ferent perspective from the North-American dominated stud-
ies common in the M&MP. And yet the current work is not
a comparative study: rather, the shift in context and in the
cultural resources represented in the participating teacher
group offered me as a design-based researcher an oppor-
tunity to reflect on my own assumptions through iterative
acts of “translation.” In this sense, a limitation of the study
is that the teachers’ own reflections on the “seeds” of mod-
elling practice represented in the activity sequence are not
foregrounded. Further work could analyze the rubric that the
teachers developed for evaluating their own lesson designs;
the lessons they created; and the reflective analyses they
conducted as part of their individual projects. These data
would give an image of the teachers’ perceptions of and their
stance toward the model of modelling they experienced in
the course.
Finally, future work might explore how the representa-
tional imagination can open connections between modelling,
engineering, and collective action. By imagining possible
phenomena or behaviors of a system, modellers can move
from a describing a system to devising modifications to that
system that achieve a desired goal-state. Modellers with such
abilities are positioned not only to describe the world, but
also to envision actions to change it.
7 Conclusion
How can classroom-based activities offer learners “seeds”
of modelling as it exists in the world beyond school? The
M&MP offers one approach, along with an evolving model
13
58
of classroom modelling, refined through design-based
research. Within that tradition, Model-Eliciting Activities
provide groups of learners opportunities to modify and
refine their models as they represent their diverse ways
of thinking in a shared effort to address identified needs
and goals. Since researchers, too, are engaged in model-
ling work, at a different level, similar dynamics can operate
among research efforts to make sense of classroom model-
ling. Lesh and Fennewald (2013) identify a wide range of
perspectives and methodologies in the international educa-
tion research on modelling. In one view, this diversity can be
seen as problematic: imposing barriers to communication,
collaboration, and progress in our field. In another view,
however, this diversity can be an engine for innovation, and
we can build more powerful models of classroom modelling
by bridging these different perspectives. One goal of such
work would be to account for modelling resources such as
the representational imagination that connect richly with
vibrant practices in real world modelling. This article has
aimed to contribute to that process.
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