Cultural transposition: Italian didactic experiences inspired by Chinese and Russian perspectives on whole number arithmetic

Abstract

The paper presents some reflections and activities developed by researchers and teachers involved in teacher education programs on cultural transposition. The construct of cultural transposition is presented as a condition for decentralizing the didactic practice of a specific cultural context through contact with other didactic practices of different cultural contexts. We discuss the background theoretical issues of this approach and also give an analysis of two examples of cultural transposition experiences carried out in Italy. In particular, by means of qualitative analysis of some excerpts, discussions, and interviews, we show that the contact with different perspectives coming from China and Russia fostered educational practices and reflections on whole number arithmetic education.

Teachers’ Involvement in Designing MERLO Items: Boundary Crossing

“…Teachers appropriated MERLO items and, in their specific context, enlarged their set of resources feeding into their teaching practices. Even if not sufficiently discussed here, this crossing was fundamental and could be interpreted in light of cultural transposition (Mellone et al 2019). However, these teachers maintained the structure (invariant elements: task, five statements, different representations, criteria of meaning equivalence and surface similarity), while changing the institutional context.…”

The time is out of joint. Teacher subjectivity during COVID-19

“…Recently, the perspective of Cultural transposition (CT) was proposed to frame and design the encounter of teachers with Mathematics Education tools and methodologies coming from different cultural contexts (Mellone et al, 2019(Mellone et al, , 2020. For example, it was used to frame the encounter of a group of Italian in-service primary teachers with the "problems with variations" method, an educational tool used in Chinese primary school that can foster early algebraic thinking.…”

“…For example, it was used to frame the encounter of a group of Italian in-service primary teachers with the “problems with variations” method, an educational tool used in Chinese primary school that can foster early algebraic thinking. This encounter, at first, lead Italian teachers to face a moment of crisis and, later, thanks to lead of educators, to realize the lack of attention towards algebraic thinking in the Italian primary school practice (Mellone et al, 2019 ). These encounters between teachers and teaching practices from foreign countries, and the connected experiences of crisis, are proposed during professional development courses designed for supporting the participating teachers in developing awareness about their teaching practice and in emancipating themselves in choosing appropriate educational tools based on their educational intentionality.…”

The semiosphere: A lens to look at lesson study practices in their cultural context

“…In Italy, as a foreign cultural element, Lesson Study (LS) has been implemented in order to allow mathematics teachers and researchers to reflect on and thus to question their own didactic practices and intentionality (Bartolini Bussi & Ramploud, 2018;Mellone, Ramploud, Martignone & Di Paola, 2019). Designing, implementing and observing, and afterwards reviewing a one-hour lesson have been uncommon spaces for collaborative reflection of Italian mathematics teachers, because of their cultural tradition.…”