Contract and Custom: Two Registers of Didactical Interactions

Nicolas Balacheff (1)

1 LIG - Laboratoire d'Informatique de Grenoble

This article addresses the study of phenomena related to those social constraints on the didactic functioning in the context of my research on proof, and in particular on mathematical proof. Elsewhere I have reported on a study about the characterization of situations of validation. I offered an analysis of the relations between the characteristics of these situations and the nature of the processes of proof used by students. These analyses had essentially addressed situations of validation largely isolated from the teacher, that is to say adidactical situations in the sense of Brousseau' Theory of Didactical Situations. In this paper I draw on the results of an experimental study to examine the didactic constraints attached to the social characteristics of didactic situations, particularly the problem of the nature and means of their regulation.

Mots clés: learning mathematical proof; didactical situation; mathematical argumentation; mathematics education; didactic of mathematics

Domaines: Histoire et perspectives sur les mathématiques [math.HO]; Education

Nicolas Balacheff. Contract and Custom: Two Registers of Didactical Interactions. Mathematics Educator, 1999, 9 (2), pp.23-29. ⟨hal-01286511⟩