What transitions in mathematics education? Review of the literature
Résumé
Many different kinds of transitions are studied in the research literature. In our survey we mainly address two kinds of change: (a) conceptual change and learning as a transition process and (b) transitions as people move between social groups or contexts with different mathematical practices.
Some researchers have studied changes happening within the mathematical content from an epistemological perspective, sometimes drawing on the history of mathematics. Research from this perspective for the most part also studies transitions in students’ learning; these cognitive transitions can be studied with different theoretical frameworks and can concern specific mathematical topics but also more general issues, such as the transition between different thinking modes.
Other authors consider that mathematics is shaped by groups of people who develop shared mathematical practices: educational institutions, but also the workplace. Such transitions have been investigated mainly by researchers with a sociocultural perspective. These studies often identify discontinuities and sometimes design teaching experiments in order to smooth the transition.