SNF Project ReCoRePro

Study of devolution and institutionalization processes in a mathematics problem-solving instruction. Collaborative approach and development of a resource for teachers.


Problem solving is an important aspect of mathematics and of the curriculum. However, research shows that its teaching is complex. Therefore, our goal is to better understand what is at stake between teachers' practices and students' learning around problem solving in mathematics. More precisely, we want to know how a teacher can help students to better appropriate a problem and help them to progress in its resolution without doing too much for them.
On the one hand, we want to know more about teachers' practices when they teach mathematical problem solving. Our previous work gave us results for the secondary level, we will continue this work for the primary level through the study of some cases.
On the other hand, we are collaborating with secondary school mathematics teachers (it is also planned to collaborate with primary school teachers at a later stage) to better understand what students do in class when they solve a problem and what can be done to support and encourage their work.
We rely on the design, implementation and analysis of the sessions to develop an in-service training tool to equip teachers.
Our work is based on a collaborative research process, which is, according to us, necessary to a better appropriation of the results obtained. Different theoretical frameworks from didactics of mathematics are mobilized to build the research methodology and to analyze the data.

Keywords
Problem solving, mathematics, teaching practices, students' learning, collaborative research, devolution, institutionalization