When students are learning new content
with concrete manipulatives, they will
experience mathematics in an enactive
mode. Th ey can move to another mode of
representation, iconic, by drawing pictures or
using virtual manipulatives. Th ese concrete
and iconic representations can ameliorate
students’ use of symbolic representations via
patterns, symbols, formulas, and tables. As a
result, we believe that experiences with both
physical and virtual manipulatives can impact
teaching and learning mathematics because
students who need these supports (much like
we did as we sat in the high school classroom
and worked on the “Problem of the Week”)
can move through Burner’s (1966) modes of
representation to the symbolic or abstract.
Th erefore, the importance of allowing high
school students opportunities to use concrete
manipulatives to solve some mathematics
problems cannot be overstated.