Mathematics and Science: The relationships and disconnections between research and education

Participants:

18 students from 8 countries (registration closed)

Teachers:

Assistant Professor Marianne Achiam (University of Copenhagen)
Professor Marianna Bosch (Ramon Llull University, Spain)
Associate Professor Niklas Gericke (Karlstad University, Sweden)
Professor Tetsuo Isozaki (Hiroshima University, Japan)
Professor Carl Winsløw (University of Copenhagen)

Description:

The teaching and dissemination of mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry and other sciences (designated in the following as ‘science’) in schools and other educational institutions is fundamentally based on the research disciplines that give them their name. Through a process of didactic transposition, science knowledge, values and practices are apprehended from their place of production – the domain of scientific research – and deconstructed and reconstructed in order to become teachable in the domain of science education. This process is inevitable and indeed, necessary; however, it is regulated by a number of factors, not all of which correspond to didactic intents. On the one hand, the role of the school is not simply to transmit as much of science disciplines as accurately as possible, but to form citizens who can function in today’s and not least tomorrow’s societies; on the other hand, the distance between ‘living science’ and ‘school science’ is not always justified by this basic role, but simply by the distance among research institutions and schools, as when the school discipline perpetuates the teaching of knowledge which has become more or less obsolete in scientific research and, eventually (sometimes even quicker!) also in society. Thus, didactic transposition carries with it the risk of delay (Quessada & Clément, 2007), the introduction of notions in isolation from their origin and thus concealment of the ‘true’ functioning of science (Brousseau, 2002), or ultimately, pathological substitutions (Chevallard, 1991). These phenomena have implications for variety of educational contexts; from teacher professional development (Winsløw to appear) to the design of teaching-learning sequences (Levrini & Fantini, 2013), quality of textbooks (Quessada & Clément, 2007) and development of museum exhibits (Mortensen, 2010). In brief, didactic transposition must remain ‘alive’ and alert to new potentials of interactions between ‘science in the making’ and, more broadly, ‘science in society’ on the one hand, and the teaching and dissemination of science in schools and museums on the other. The societal and institutional conditions for maintaining these links differ from one society to another, and so an international perspective can also help to identify possibilities and obstacles in a particular society.

Literature

Brousseau, G. (2002). Theory of didactical situations in mathematics. New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Chevallard, Y. (1991). La transposition didactique: Du savoir savant au savoir enseigné. Grenoble: La Pensée Sauvage, Editions.

Levrini, O., & Fantini, P. (2013). Encountering productive forms of complexity in learning modern physics. Science & Education, 22(8), 1895-1910.

Mortensen, M. F. (2010). Museographic transposition: The development of a museum exhibit on animal adaptations to darkness. Éducation & Didactique, 4(1), 119-137.

Quessada, M. P., & Clément, P. (2007). An epistemological approach to French syllabi on human origins during the 19th and 20th centuries. Science & Education, 16(9-10), 991-1006.

Winsløw C (to appear). The transition from university to high school and the case of exponential functions. Proceedings of the 8th Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education.