When graduate student and elementary educator Jessica Bodnar '18 (Otonabee College) set out to complete her Master of Education (M.Ed.) degree, she was excited at the opportunity to step outside of her comfort zone. That approach inspired her to take her Trent education further by enrolling in the Interdisciplinary Social Research program (IDSR) Ph.D. program upon graduation.  

“There’s no way I would have ended up here if I hadn’t had the experience with Dr. Cathy Bruce, taking me on as a student and mentor, and really becoming a friend,” recounts Bodnar of her pathway at Trent. “I think this is a big part of why Trent is such a special place. It’s that you really get to work deeply with the professors that you’re connected to.” 

As an educator for around 15 years, Bodnar has always been interested in professional development, specifically around early years mathematics.  

“When you’re an educator, you’re engaged in action research every day – what’s going to happen if I try this? how will students engage with these materials? – but you don’t often get the opportunity to step outside of the classroom to reflect and theorize about what you’re doing, so I just really needed time to step out and get a chance to dig a little deeper.” 

Taking the leap

Bodnar attributes her reasons for choosing to study at Trent to the dynamic connections with staff and faculty, the engaging and high calibre course work, and to the flexibility of the program which offered a thesis route. The strong mentorship and support from staff and faculty in the M.Ed. program, ultimately provided Bodnar the opportunity to continue into the IDSR Ph.D. where her work in mathematics could be fully realized. 

“I’m trying to push some of the thinking we have around spatial representations in mathematics classrooms, sometimes there’s a tendency to see visual representations (like grids and number lines) solely as a way to communicate thinking, ‘I solved the problem, now I’m going to draw the number line to show it’– but what Dr. Bruce is helping me think about, is ‘how could these visual representations actually be tools you’re thinking with’, so, you actually might be the number line or be the grid, you might imagine yourself from different perspectives walking along a number line or grid, you might call up a grid in your mind’s eye and overlay it onto the world around you to help you see the world differently – then you’re thinking with the tool, it’s helping you see and think about all kinds of big and powerful mathematical ideas. This way you build a personal relationship with a tool that you can call on to help you think with at any time!” 

Along with colleagues on the west coast of Canada, Prof. Bruce and Bodnar are in early investigations looking at how students could use app driven technology to think with grids. On The Griddler, an app in development, students can stretch, bend and scale grids over images they have captured or use the camera feature to see the world around them through a mutable grid.  

Bodnar says: “We’re exploring how students think about grids when they have an opportunity to make them dynamic, usually in classrooms students only see static square grids sitting behind the math activity they’re working on, we’re wondering what happens when grids can be stretched and scaled at your fingertips, what happens when we give students a chance to play with and explore the world around them through the spatial features of grids? Does it help improve their understanding of mathematics?” 

Click to hear more about what Bodnar has to say about the program.