Pierre François Burgermeister

The extramathematical situations appearing within mathematics education as it is usually organised within a Geneva secondary school today generally revolves around role play aiming at working on mathematics education techniques. Conversely, a true work of modelisation of extramathematical situations, within which multiple potential mathematical models are vetted against each other and discussed, remains a rare practice in an institution that actually seems to want to promote it if we look at the official guidelines.

How can this gap between institutional guidelines and teacher practices be explained? How does it relate to the historical evolution of mathematics education in secondary school?

I propose to centre the study of this problematic on two objectives of classic teaching: proportionality in the middle school and the resolution of optimisation problems using differential calculus in high school (Collège). The task will then be to study the didactical organisation used for these two themes in the historical evolutions from the start of the 20^th century to today.