Mirko Maracci

Connecting and Integrating Theoretical Frames: The TELMA Contribution

This paper presents the methodology developed within TELMA for connecting and integrating the theoretical frames used by the different teams for studying the design and use of interactive learning environments in mathematics education. Two case studies are then analysed and compared in order to illustrate the methodology and the results it can lead to. The papers ends by a more general discussion about the outcomes of the experimental work developed within TELMA and the perspectives it offers for approaching theoretical fragmentation.

Resources for the Teacher from a Semiotic Mediation Perspective

The potential of ICT tools for learning have been extensively studied, with a main focus on their possible use by students and the subsequent benefits for them. However, there has been the tendency to underestimate the complexity of the teacher’s role in exploiting this potential. In this chapter, we assume a semiotic mediation perspective and discuss different kinds of resources which are offered to teachers to enhance the teaching–learning activity centred on the use of an ICT tool: by resource for the teacher we mean any artefact which may help the teacher accomplish her educational objectives. Taking a semiotic mediation perspective means to acknowledge the central role of signs in teaching–learning activity: the focus is on semiotic processes, specifically production of signs and their transformation. Fostering or guiding these processes is a crucial issue and a demanding task for the teacher. Consequently, from such a perspective, a resource for the teacher is any artefact that can help her promoting and sustaining the development of those semiotic processes. In this chapter, we discuss the teacher’s use of specific resources – namely written texts – with respect to the semiotic processes which she is expected to orchestrate in the different moments of the teaching sequence.

CERME7 Working Group 15: Technologies and resources in mathematics education

Papers presented in WG15 at CERME7 give evidence of a continuing interest in technologies, and more generally in various resources, in mathematics education. The papers raise important issues which can be related to three main themes. Design and use of technologies and resources. Design choices are underpinned mainly by epistemological considerations related to the mathematical domain at stake. Thus, Ladel and Kortenkamp draw on mathematical aspects of numbers and operations in the design of a multi-touch technology aimed at helping pupils to conceptualise the notion of number and understand operations on integers. Designbased research (DBRC 2003) is used by Kohanová to design specific software for visually impaired students. The issues of appropriation and use of technologies and resources are addressed mostly from an instrumental perspective (Rabardel 2002). Sabra and Trouche use this framework to observe individual and collective aspects of the design of an online mathematics textbook by a community of teachers. Persson combines this framework, which he uses to analyse teachers’ instrumental orchestration of student-tool interactions (Drijvers et al. 2010), with a model proposed by DeBellis and Goldin (1997) to take into account teachers’ emotions, attitudes, beliefs and values linked with technologies. Aldon et al. and Storfossen use the instrumental approach to explore students’ use of various technological tools, such as TI-Nspire technology, spreadsheets and graphic calculators. Teachers’ professional development toward the integration of technologies and resources. Teachers’ practices are analysed at different levels of granularity, requiring the design and use of different methodological tools, from fine-grained analyses (Billington), through survey studies (Bretscher), to studies combining both qualitative and quantitative methods (Drijvers). A number of challenges that the integration of technologies and resources poses to teachers can be described and discussed in terms of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (Mishra and Koehler 2006) that they need to develop (Fuglestad). From the instrumental perspective (Rabardel 2002), some of these challenges can be related to the need for teachers to transform a tool both into a mathematical and a didactical instrument (Haspekian). Assuming that the analysis of teachers’ attitudes and intentions toward the use of technology is necessary in order to understand why some are reluctant to use it, Pittalis uses the