Models for products

This paper explores how models can support productive thinking. For us a model is a thing, a tool to help make sense of something. We restrict attention to specific models for whole-number multiplication, hence the wording of the title. They support evolving thinking in large measure through the ways their users redesign them. They assume new forms, come to be seen and understood in different ways. We show how work that learners do with models can help them to transform, not simply their understanding of key concepts, but also how they come to view themselves as thinkers and learners, as collaborators in a social process that their work and thinking help to constitute. We draw on recent research on core knowledge, especially by Carey, Spelke, and Tomasello, to clarify how models, as we view them here, can underpin specific actions that support emerging understanding.

► This paper explores how models can support productive thinking. We restrict attention to whole-number multiplication.
► Models in our sense support evolving thinking through the ways their users redesign them.
► We draw on recent research on core knowledge and cognition to explicate how learners’ models can support continuing conceptual development.