Maria Giuseppina Bartolini Bussi

En este artículo trazamos un recorrido que da cuenta del trabajo de Transposición del Lesson Study (LS) de la cultura oriental a la italiana a través de la perspectiva dada por el enfoque de la Transposición Cultural. En ella, el encuentro con una cultura diferente es visto como un medio capaz de suscitar en los docentes nuevas y más profundas reflexiones sobre sus propios hábitos y prácticas educativas. Llamamos al producto de este proceso el “Lesson Study Italiana” (ILS): no está establecido a priori, sino que depende de las solicitudes a los participantes que los investigadores, como formadores de docentes, eligieron implantar en él. En particular, presentamos 4 ejemplos de ILS llevados a cabo en diferentes años escolares (1, 5, 8, 9), para resaltar cómo cada equipo de LS respondió a estas solicitudes a través de sus elecciones de diseño sobre la Clase de Investigación y las reflexiones críticas de los diferentes participantes. En base a esta descripción, en las conclusiones esbozamos algunas características comunes y diferencias entre los ejemplos, con el fin de resaltar reflexiones más generales sobre las posibles formas de implementar LS en culturas distintas de las orientales.

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to describe teachers’ professional development in Lesson Study (LS) as processes situated in Semiosphere and generated by the unevenness due to different cultural traditions. The authors characterise teachers’ professional development in two LS experiments as processes generating new knowledge to point out their products, i.e. new professional frame teachers produce after these experiments. The authors use Hybridization, a particular form of Networking of Theories (NWT).Design/methodology/approach: The authors collected video-registration of several Italian LS meetings. The authors analyse two LSs, where time emerged as a conflictual aspect. Through Hybridization components, the authors show how teachers make sense of LS and how teachers revise their professional frame.Theoretical framework: In NWT different theories are deployed to study the same problem. To grasp the issue of unevenness in our LS, we use Hybridization of a Theory, a form of NWT characterised by a structural asymmetry. It is given when a construct c is introduced coherently, operatively and productively into a theory T, obtaining a hybridized theory T'.Findings: Hybridization lens allows to describe potentialities and limits of LS as a tool for teachers’ development. The two analysed LS are different: in one of them Hybridization process produced a new theory T', whilst in the second one it was limited to the awareness of a gap between LS and initial teachers’ professional frame.Practical implications: Identifying links between different Hybridization components is a helpful tool for teacher educators/researchers to foster the shift from one another. For instance, through this tool, teacher educators could keep track of what happens in successive LS and mirror the dialogue between teachers, moving towards group-shared metareflections. This initiates the advancement of a new theory T', where asymmetries are interpreted.Originality/value: In this approach teachers are protagonists of the construction of a new professional frame. LS is a tool for teachers’ professional development, allowing teachers to question their own educational intentionalities. Hybridization components provide a tool to analyse such a process.

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore the rationale and findings of the implementation of a Chinese lesson study (CLS)-informed model of mathematics teacher education in Italian schools. The study focuses on the modifications and invariance when introducing CLS in a different culture.Design/methodology/approach: In a previous work (Bartolini Bussi et al., 2017), the authors focused on a single case of activity inspired by the CLS in Italy, and identified some conflicts emerging between the cultures of teaching in China and Italy and explored the way to overcome the conflicts. In the following years, the authors implemented lesson study (LS) experimentations with dozens of in-service primary school teachers and pre-service teachers who were gradually introduced to the model of CLS. The tensions/constraints occurred prominently when extending the experiments with many dozens of other in-service teachers and pre-service teachers.Findings: The authors highlighted how the process of deconstruction allowed the participants in the study to either appropriate or reject some features of the CLS, linking this process to the cultural differences.Practical implications: The authors believe and argue that LS, and CLS in particular, must be modified in the transfer from one culture to another, considering the cultural beliefs of the involved teachers.Originality/value: The authors claim that the features of CLS compels the Western researchers to adopt local and culturally determined choices and to be aware of the rationale of these choices.

Aim of this presentation is to summarize the influence of Tamas Varga on the Italian research and practice concerning didactics of mathematics since the 70s of the 20th centuries. While being in Budapest for the Conference I noticed that this influence was not known by most Hungarian mathematics educators. I guess that also in Italy, only the teacher educators of my generation know Varga’s influence on the teaching and learning of mathematics in primary school. Hence I start from a brief summary of development of mathematics curriculum in Italy (mainly in primary school) in the last decades of the 20th century. I focus some elements that may be connected with Varga’s influence and, later, some recent development of them. Subject Classification: 97G20, 97-U6, 97A40

This chapter begins with a discussion of what it means to develop young children's mathematics knowledge and the importance of learning mathematics during the early years. It deals with themes that have continuously interested researchers in Early Years Mathematics (EYM) working group, as well as ideas that have been developed over the European Research in Mathematics Education (CERME) conferences. The chapter looks at connections between this working group and other CERME working groups. It reviews some of the challenges this group faces as well as future research directions. The chapter highlights a few themes that have continuously run through CERME meetings at the EYM group. It discusses balancing agency, free play, guided play, structured materials and teacher guidance. From the first meeting of the EYM group, scholars from different countries brought with them research traditions and related theoretical frameworks that appeared to be strictly linked to cultural contexts. The EYM Working Group faces many difficult, but important and interesting questions.

This chapter witnesses the growing importance of understanding the role of the social and cultural context in which the teaching and learning of mathematics is situated, outlining the background to the studies conducted in recent decades. The aim of this chapter is to report on the process that led the IPC to prepare a background information context form for each submitted paper, for the first time in an ICMI Study and, also, in any major international conference. A short analysis of the 66 completed context forms that were received is provided with elaboration and commentary. These data are a convenience sampling based on these submissions, rather than a representation of the population of mathematics educators as a whole. The information provides an ‘insider’ view based on the applicants’ perceptions, rather than a collection of objective data. This contextual information, however, concerns the participants attending the ICMI23 Macao Conference; hence it is important to understand the perceptions of the contributors involved in writing this volume: the data provide outlines of the pre- and primary level schooling cultures and systems within which particular kinds of findings, interventions and outcomes are achieved.

The core of this chapter is the notion of artefact, starting from the discussion of the meaning of the word in the literature and offering a gallery of cultural artefacts from the participants’ reports and the literature. The idea of artefacts is considered in a broad sense, to include also language and texts. The use of cultural artefacts as teaching aids is addressed. A special section is devoted to the artefacts (teaching aids) from technologies (including virtual manipulatives). The issue of tasks is simply skimmed, but it is not possible to discuss about artefacts without considering the way of using artefacts with suitable tasks. Some examples of tasks are reported to elaborate about aspects that may foster learning whole number arithmetic (WNA). Artefacts and tasks appear as an inseparable pair, to be considered within a cultural and institutional context. Some future challenges are outlined concerning the issue of teacher education, in order to cope with this complex map.