The discursive routine of personifying and its manifestation by two instructors

Abstract

International audienceThis paper focuses on teaching processes in the mathematics classroom. We adopt Sfard's communicational framework to address the question: What were the teaching actions that seem to promote learning? To address the question, we analyzed four lessons taken from two courses about functions which were studied by elementary school prospective mathematics teachers. We identified a teaching mechanism that seems to relate teaching to students' learning. This mechanism includes flexible and dynamic transition between mathematizing (talk about mathematical objects), subjectifying (talk about the participants) and personifying (talk about human participants acting upon mathematical objects). We also identified several types of personifying talk