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Este artigo discute a atividade de resolução de problemas de Matemática com tecnologias no âmbito de um campeonato extraescolar a distância. O estudo visa descrever os aspetos subjacentes à utilização simultânea de conhecimento matemático e tecnológico nessa atividade, com foco no desenvolvimento de modelos conceptuais que conduzem às soluções dos problemas. A investigação, de natureza qualitativa, centra-se na análise de um conjunto de produções digitais elaboradas pelos participantes com recurso ao GeoGebra. Os dados mostram que o software é usado de forma livre e voluntária para estruturar e amplificar o pensamento matemático, influenciando os processos de resolução. Para além de suportar a materialização das situações problemáticas e favorecer a transformação de ideias estáticas em ideias dinâmicas, faz emergir matematizações que sustentam modelos conceptuais bastante distintos. Os aspetos subjacentes à existência de diferentes modos de resolver-e-exprimir um dado problema com o GeoGebra são explicados em termos da fluência tecno-matemática de cada participante., This paper addresses a mathematical problem-solving activity with technology in the context of an online beyond school competition. The study aims to describe the underlying aspects of simultaneously resorting to mathematical and technological knowledge in such an activity, focusing on the development of conceptual models for the solutions of problems. The research, following a qualitative approach, is based on the analysis of a set of digital solutions produced with GeoGebra. Main results show that the software is used freely and willingly to structure and amplify the mathematical thinking, influencing the solving and expressing processes. Besides supporting the materialization of the problematic situations and promoting the transformation of static ideas into dynamic ideas, it drives mathematization processes that support quite different conceptual models. The fundamental features that lead to different ways of solving-and-expressing a given problem with GeoGebra are explained in terms of the techno-mathematical fluency of each participant.

Research has long been using analytical tools to describe the processes students engage in when solving non-routine mathematical problems. In this chapter we describe and discuss our progress on devising and implementing an analytical tool that aims to account for the use of technological tools by combining a mathematical problem solving model with a digital problem solving framework. By means of the Mathematical Problem Solving with Technology model (MPST) we report the case of Marco using technologies for solving two problems from a beyond school competition. Results show that Marco’s choice of the tools is grounded on an explicit knowledge of their affordances and how they enhance his mathematical thinking, mainly by triggering visual approaches that support the development of conceptual models for solving-and-expressing the solutions to the problems.

All over the world, several organizations have nurtured the development of students’ problem-solving abilities by organizing competitions and tournaments of different kinds. This is the case of the Mathematical Competitions SUB12 and SUB14, promoted by the University of Algarve, addressing students from grades 5 to 8 (10–14 year olds) in the south of Portugal. To each proposed problem, participants are required to explain their problem-solving process and find ways to express their thinking. They may use any of the digital tools they have available and they find useful for solving a given problem. Our research has uncovered the aptitudes of young competitors in taking advantage of everyday digital tools and its representational expressiveness to give form and substance to their reasoning and strategies. Another emerging aspect is the apparent existence of different degrees of robustness of the solutions submitted, mainly in terms of the strategies that competitors develop, with a particular technological tool, to solve the problems. In this chapter, we are taking a selection of solutions submitted to two problems, in which competitors resort to GeoGebra, in one case, and to Excel, in the other. We offer a proposal for identifying levels of sophistication and robustness of technology-based solutions to the problems, according to the characteristics of the tool use and its connection to the conceptual models underlying students’ thinking on the problems.

This study offers a view on students' technology-based problem solving activity through the lens of a theoretical model which accounts for the relationship between mathematical and technological knowledge in successful problem solving. This study takes a qualitative approach building on the work of a 13-year-old girl as an exemplary case of the nature of young students' spontaneous mathematical problem solving with technology. The empirical data comprise digital records of her approaches to two problems from a web-based mathematical competition where she resorted to GeoGebra and an interview where she explains and describes her usual problem solving activity with this tool. Based on a proposed model for describing the processes of mathematical problem solving with technologies (MPST), the main results show that this student's solving and expressing the solution are held from the early and continuing interplay between mathematical skills and the perception of the affordances of the tool. The analytical model offers a clear picture of the type of actions that lead to the solution of each problem, revealing the student's ability to deal with mathematics and technology in problem solving. By acknowledging this as a case of a human-with-media in solving mathematical problems, the students' efficient way of merging technological and mathematical knowledge is portrayed in terms of her techno-mathematical fluency. project Problem@Web - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia [PTDC/CPE-CED/101635/2008] Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia [SFRH/BD/73363/2010] info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The final chapter summarises the overall findings of the Problem@Web project and considers the implications of the findings in terms of how the youngsters of today tackle mathematical problems and communicate their mathematical problem-solving. With data from the youngsters’ participation in two online mathematical problem-solving competitions that were characterised by moderately challenging problems, we found that the youngsters we studied had domain over a set of general-use digital tools and while they were less aware of digital resources with a stronger association with mathematics they were able to gain many capabilities by tackling the mathematical problems and seeking expeditious, appropriate and productive ways of expressing their mathematical thinking. In this respect, they were able to harness their technological skills while simultaneously developing and improving their capacity to create and use a range of mathematical representations. We explain this as co-action between the tool and the solver, with this interconnectedness leading to jointly developed technological skills and mathematical skills that result in the capacity of mathematical problem-solving with technology. Given the possibility of youngsters developing this capacity, a key issue is how this can be harnessed to promote the success of youngsters in mathematics in our digital era.

Given that solving mathematical problems entails developing ways of thinking and expressing thoughts about challenging situations where a mathematical approach is appropriate, this chapter unveils a theoretical framework that aims to guide a better interpretation of students’ capability to solve mathematical problems with digital technologies, in the context of online mathematical competitions. The main purpose is to provide a way of understanding how students find effective and productive ways of thinking about the problem and how they achieve the solution and communicate it mathematically, based on the digital resources available. By discussing several theoretical tools and constructs, a theoretical stance is developed to conceptualise problem-solving as a synchronous process of mathematisation and of expressing mathematical thinking in which digital tools play a key role. This theorisation draws on the role of external representations and discusses how a digital-mathematical discourse is used to express the development of the conceptual models underlying the solution. In this conceptualisation, a symbiotic relation between the individual and the digital tools used in problem-solving and expressing is postulated and outlined: the inseparability of humans and media sustains the idea that students and tools are agents performing knowledge in co-action, while approaching mathematical problems. Looking at the solution to a problem is seeing a fusion of the solver’s knowledge and the tool’s built-in knowledge, rather than an aggregate of both or a complementarity between them.

Over several years of the SUB12 and SUB14 online mathematical competitions, we became aware of the technological fluency of many of the young participants. We draw on quantitative data from a survey that was administered online by inviting all participants to respond. The data show how the participants describe themselves in terms of their experience with several digital tools. We have found that they feel comfortable with the use of text and presentation editors and know how to use several tools for writing, creating tables and constructing diagrams and visual representations. In contrast, they seem to be less capable with spreadsheets (especially as a mathematical tool) and dynamic geometry software. Some participants preferred to submit copies of their hand-written answers to the problems as scanned images or digital photos. In reporting the results of our survey, we present a selection of solutions covering a palette of examples that help to exemplify the skills and fluency of the competition participants. They unveil a particular trait of this mathematical problem-solving activity since these digital solutions bring together problem-solving and the expressing of mathematical thinking.

This chapter offers the perspectives of teachers on youngsters solving mathematical problems with technology during the SUB12 and SUB14 mathematics competitions. Drawing on a series of interviews with teachers who have supported the participation of their students over several editions of the competitions, we identified what they see as the competitions’ most significant features. The teachers spoke about the different kinds of support that are available to youngsters throughout the successive stages of the competitions, from the initial dissemination, to the online Qualifying phases, and lastly to the on-site Final. Based on their statements, the teachers say that they value the type of problems they characterise as challenging, real problems, appropriate for all students and useful as pedagogical resources. They make a distinction between such non-routine and extracurricular problems and the more school-like problems presented in mathematics textbooks. They are favourable to the use of technologies within the competitions, even when admitting initial difficulties that they nevertheless seemed to have overcome over the years. Some of these teachers enthusiastically describe how they sometimes integrated the competition problems into their class teaching and how they helped and encouraged students to use digital technologies for solving and expressing the solutions they submitted. The need to develop mathematical communication is seen as another challenge, and this, say the teachers, gave them the opportunity to explore different mathematical representations with their students. As a final point, several teachers highlighted the fact that youngsters’ participation in the competitions was a motivating factor, contributing to their enjoyment of mathematics and feelings of inclusion in a community gathering many youngsters, parents and teachers around mathematical challenges.

Today’s youngsters are growing up in an era of rapidly advancing digital technologies. While young people in this generation are undoubtedly active users of digital technologies, the issue of whether their digital competency levels are necessarily well developed is a topic of debate. This chapter provides an introduction to, and an overview of, the Problem@Web project, a project that grew out of our interest in understanding how Portuguese youngsters participated in two online mathematical problem-solving competitions. These online competitions have allowed youngsters in any suitable place, and at any suitable time, to engage themselves in tackling mathematical problems by utilising solving strategies with any digital tools that they have available. During the project, we analysed numerous problem solutions submitted throughout three editions of the competitions and interviewed a sample of young participants, mathematics teachers and youngsters’ parents and relatives. The chapter captures the contribution that the Problem@Web project makes to understand youngsters’ mathematical problem-solving with technology.

In this chapter, we describe and analyse a number of examples of 7th and 8th graders showing diverse ways of expressing their mathematical thinking in solving algebraic word problems with a spreadsheet. Different youngsters’ approaches to situations where quantity variation is involved are characterised. The problems require finding an unknown value under a set of conditions that frame a problem situation. The use of the spreadsheet is thoroughly examined with the aim of highlighting the nature of problem-solving and expressing in the digital tool context as compared to the formal algebraic method; moreover, the ways in which students take advantage of the tool (being guided by and also guiding the spreadsheet distinctive forms of organising and performing variation in columns and cells) are important indicators of their algebraic thinking within the problem-solving activity. Finally, we pay attention to indicators of “co-action” in students’ work on the spreadsheet as it tends to be more related to structuring solutions by means of creating variable-columns than with tentative ways of generating inputs in recipient cells.

This chapter develops around two fundamental ideas, namely, that (1) the perception of the affordances of a certain digital tool is essential to solving mathematical problems with that particular technology and that (2) the activity thus undertaken stimulates different mathematising processes which, in turn, result in different conceptual models. Looking thoroughly, from an interpretative perspective, at four solutions to a particular geometry problem from participants who decided to use dynamic geometry software at some point of their solving activity, our main purpose is to illustrate the ways in which the same tool affords different approaches to the problem in terms of the conceptual models developed for studying and justifying the invariance of the area of a triangle. Their different ways of dealing with the tool and with mathematical knowledge are interpreted as instances of students-with-media engaged in a “solving-with-dynamic-geometry-software” activity, enclosing a range of procedures brought forth by the symbioses between the affordances of the dynamic geometry software and the youngsters’ aptitudes. The analysis shows that different people solving the same problem with the same digital media and recognising a relatively similar set of affordances of the tool produce different digital solutions, but they also generate qualitatively different conceptual models, in this case, for the invariance of the area.

This chapter explores the plethora of literature on teachers’ 21st century skills. The authors explore two broad paradigms found in the literature. The first and most prominent advocate educational reform; formulating ways to better the existing systems and provide teachers with new skills to teach. The second seek to replace the existing systems in order to provide teachers with far greater autonomy to re-imagine education holistically for the future.

The posts from an online global exchange were categorised into themes that revealed a comprehensive picture of new and pre-existing 21st century skills. Central to the required skills that the educators’ addressed were critical thinking, problem-solving, collaborative learning, learner-centred teaching and digital literacy.

In this Qualitative Comparative Analysis, the ideas of posters in a global online exchange are compared to a group of Big Thinkers in 21st century education. The analysis reveals many commonalities in their desire for urgent and radical change. Both groups are in agreement that a new paradigm of education is required, providing far more autonomy to teachers. In order for education to move towards innovation, creativity and cooperative problem-solving, the current and enduring tensions between this radical change and the prevailing standardisation discourse need to be resolved. There are opportunities for further research and action.