Sui processi di modellizzazione e di problem posing nell’insegnamento/apprendimento della Matematica

Abstract

In order to introduce, at an early stage, ideas underpinning the process of realistic mathematical modelling, the activities currently used to create an interplay between mathematics taught in the classroom and everyday life experiences must be replaced with more realistic and less stereotyped problem situations. In this paper we will discuss how these changes can be brought about at primary school level through classroom activities that are more easily related to the experiential world of the pupil and consistent with a sense-making disposition. We will show how an extensive use of cultural or social artifacts could prove to be useful instruments in creating a new interplay between schoolroom mathematics and the real world with its incorporated mathematics, by bringing the pupil’s everyday-life experiences and informal reasoning into play. Finally certain artifacts lend themselves naturally to helping pupils with problem posing activities. The classroom activities are also based on the use of a variety of complementary, integrated, and interactive teaching methods, and on the introduction of new socio-mathematical norms, in an attempt to create a substantially modified teaching/learning environment.