Plenary sessions

Oi-Lam Ng is Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She completed her PhD in Mathematics Education at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Oi-Lam’s research interests address the new ways of doing, communicating, and representing school mathematics as afforded by technology innovations, e.g. technology-enhanced mathematics learning, constructionist pedagogies, computational thinking education, and multimodality in mathematics discourse. Her interests are rooted in advancing a Papert-inspired conception of “Learning as Making,” and the new opportunities it entails for engaging learners in constructionist practices with emergent technologies (e.g. 3D printing, programming, touchscreen applications, and AI). Her research has been published in top-tier journals in mathematics education, STEM education and educational technology, and she is currently Associate Editor of Digital Experience of Mathematics Education. Her service to the local community includes serving in the Hong Kong Curriculum Development Council–Committee on Mathematics Education.

With a background in Music Performance (Jerusalem Academy), Cognitive Psychology (Tel Aviv University), and the Learning Sciences (Northwestern University), Professor Dor Abrahamson evaluates the purchase of the embodied turn in the Cognitive Sciences on the theory and practice of mathematics education. A design-based researcher working with a range of digital technologies, Dor directs the Embodied Design Research Laboratory (est. 2005) at the University of California Berkeley. Drawing on enactivist philosophy, sociocultural theory, and complex-dynamic systems, and using mixed analytic methods, the lab conducts microgenetic investigations of students’ multimodal task-oriented interactions with peers and artifacts. Focusing on populations of neuro-, sensorimotor, and cultural diversity, the lab has created with their international collaborators award-winning artifacts that enable students to ground new concepts in their basic evolutionary capacity. The lab’s research paradigm, embodied design, elucidates how, when, and why students will endorse cultural forms as enhancing their own implicit perceptuomotor know-how. 

PhD Minna Huotilainen is Professor of Educational Sciences at University of Helsinki. Her background is in neuroscience, and she has studied perception, learning, memory and attention in individuals of all ages from infants to old age. She is using neuroscientific methods to understand the physiological basis of successful learning. Her work highlights the importance of physical activity and sleep as well as the benefits of using music as a teaching method. Neuroscientific view helps us understand how good physiological states - peaceful, positive, curious, creative - can contribute to learning cognitively demanding content knowledge.