Reconstruction of One Mathematical Invention: Focus on Structures of Attention

The goal of the study was to reconstruct and dismantle a sequence of events that preceded an insight solution to a challenging problem by a ninth-grade student. A three-week long solution process was analysed by means of the theory of shifts of attention. We argue that concurrent focusing on what, how and why the student attends to when working on the problem can adequately explain his insight. [This research is supported, in part, by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Israel by the Israeli Science Foundation and the Technion Graduate School. For the complete proceedings, see ED597799.]