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In this paper, we analyze and compare two didactical designs for introducing primary school pupils to proportional reasoning in the context of plane polygons. One of them is well-documented in the literature; the other one is based on our own data and is accordingly presented and discussed in more detail in this paper. The two designs come from different cultural and intellectual environments: lesson study in Japan (implicitly based on the “open approach method”) and “didactical engineering” in France (based on the theory of didactical situations). The general aim of our paper is to compare these two environments and their approaches to didactical design, basing our discussion on the concrete designs mentioned above. Clear differences among them are presented, while we also identify links which hold potential for integrating research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is, in France, a long-term tradition of research in the didactics of mathematics. In this paper, we revisit this tradition using, as a specific lens, the research carried out on the educational use of digital tools and resources for teaching and learning mathematics. We first briefly introduce this tradition and the three main theories at the base of it: the theory of didactical situations, the theory of conceptual fields, and the anthropological theory of the didactic. Then, considering three different technological lenses, i.e., dynamic geometry environments, computer algebra systems, and digital resources, we show how these theories and the long-term connection established in this tradition with the fields of cognitive ergonomics and computer sciences have influenced technological research and its outcomes. We also show that, conversely, didactic technological research has led to original and influential theoretical constructions, such as the instrumental approach and the documentational approach to didactics, and that it has contributed in a substantial way to the opening of this didactic tradition to other didactic cultures and other communities, beyond the didactic one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]