Walking the body-scale number line disrupted students' prior misconceptions and erroneous rules, which resurfaced when they returned to the desk-scale number line¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · design r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2025 · checked against its sources 2026-10-21 (automated, 2 of 2 entries) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Students who held erroneous sign rules or treated zero as nothing solved problems correctly on the body-scale number line, then reverted to prior strategies on the desk-scale number line. → Jacqueline Anton 2025 q2 i? The act of walking disrupted students' prior notion that zero is nothing; the familiar desk setting appeared to reinforce prior habits. → Jacqueline Anton 2025 (2)

Evidence¶

Jacqueline Anton 2025¶

Jacqueline Anton, Dor Abrahamson. (2025). Walking the number line: towards an enactive understanding of integer arithmetic. Instructional Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-025-09707-w

q2 · i? · design · r2

Episode 2 case analysis from the pilot: a student who applied a 'negative and negative makes positive' rule on the desk-scale line abandoned it after correctly solving on the walking line, then reverted to old habits on the SNL.

"However, after correctly solving the problem on the BNL, she exclaimed, "I had always thought that if it was 'a negative and a negative' then it's positive so I don't know… but the number line makes it more clear." Again, the student had not used this strategy on the BNL, but reverted to old habits when presented with the SNL."

Jacqueline Anton 2025 (2)¶

Jacqueline Anton, Dor Abrahamson. (2025). Walking the number line: towards an enactive understanding of integer arithmetic. Instructional Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-025-09707-w

q2 · i? · design · r2

Episode 1 case analysis: three students who treated zero as a placeholder on the desk-scale line had correctly solved zero problems on the walking line; the authors interpret walking as disrupting the zero-is-nothing notion.

"It is also important to note here that while enacting arithmetic on the BNL, these three students had not claimed that zero should be ignored; rather, they had correctly solved problems like "0–2" and "0–(− 2)." Something about the act of walking appears to have disrupted their previous notions that zero was nothing."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Students who got stuck on the desk-scale number line proactively returned to the body-scale number line to validate their answers, achieving perspectival mutuality — related
• Students' errors on the desk-scale number line cluster on subtracting a negative number, with fewer errors on subtracting a positive from a negative or adding a negative to a positive — related
• After a lesson series, two sixth graders could switch flexibly between perspectives when comparing negative integers; one distinguished number-line order from context-based absolute-value reasoning about debts — reports the opposite
• Returning to direct somatic experience can re-vision thinking and change perception (attributed to Reason) — a broader claim this one bears on