ABSTRACT
Calculus is traditionally a gatekeeper to higher education, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. An accessible approach to calculus could make the course and the educational and career opportunities it carries available to a broader range of students. Embodied design aims to create physically situated challenges such that the action-perception behaviors toward solving these challenges become cognitive resources. This chapter seeks to develop a physical environment in which students' intuitive bodily actions contribute to their making sense of the limit definition of derivative. The physical model contains a metal curve approximating a parabola and a drawing bar that travels along the curve, attached by two points. This environment is intended as a field of promoted action relevant to reasoning about secant and tangent lines, the basis of the limit definition of derivatives. Mathematical tools such as grid paper or labels for the points could prompt students to express and generalize their physical experiences using normative mathematical forms.
