The Treasure Game: Reworking Epistemological Foundations of a Didactical Situation to Grasp the Premises of Subject Matter Norms at Pre-school

Author(s):

Florence LigozatFrancia Leutenegger

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

27. Didactics - Learning and Teaching

Format:

Paper

Session Information

27 SES 03 B, Comparative Didactics

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-28

14:00-15:30

Room:

NIG, HS 2G

Chair:

Helmut Johannes Vollmer

Contribution

This proposal contributes to the growth of a comparative didactics as a new research field rooted in the French tradition for subject matter "didactiques" (Caillot, 2007, Chevallard, 2007). The general claim is twofold: 1) on the one hand, describing and understanding the logics of teaching and learning practices cannot be achieved from a general approach that would neglect the impact of specific knowledge organizations in shaping the classroom practices; 2) on the other hand, the study of these practices cannot be reduced merely to the internal logic of the subject matters as defined by school and / or academic institutions. In other words, moving from the actual scattered views of teaching and learning practices towards a more comprehensive model of the didactical phenomena - in line with a unified and continuous view of the subject experience (Dewey 1938) - requires delineating the generic patterns of teaching and learning practices from their specific enactments across various type of institutions, as clinical evidences serving an experimental comparative process (Mercier, Schubauer-Leoni & Sensevy, 2002). However such a study is not limited to contrasting some empirical observations; it also encompasses an investigation about the theoretical framework compatibilities in terms of epistemological foundations. In order to unveil the theoretical and methodological impact in comparative evidence-based research, we reworked a didactical game - called "The Treasure Game"- that was initially designed by Peres (1984) according to the Theory of Didactical Situations in Mathematics (TDSM / Brousseau 1997, 2004). The teaching sequence typically addresses 4-5 years old children in pre-school classes. It aims at raising the necessity of producing a designation system for various small objects (however they are all different in nature, some of them share similarities in size, color, shape…etc), as a first mean to control the content of a collection of objects. As a prototype of the TDSM, the "Treasure Game" situation embodies a constructivist view of learning the logico-mathematic principles that are involved in the coding activity. The collection of objects is designed to be an antagonist milieu for the student's actions, providing some feedbacks by itself in the situation, like it would be in a non-didactical situation (i.e. without any teaching intentions). In our analysis, we approach the Treasure Game from a socio-interactionist perspective (Vygotski, Filliettaz & Schubauer-Leoni, 2008) as we implemented it in various pre-school classes (high / low sociocultural background) both in Switzerland and in France.

Method

First, extending the research focus to the role of signs as mnemotechnical and communicational techniques, the Game becomes a mean to investigate the subject matter norms that are enacted in classroom practices. Indeed, depending on the teacher's project, the focus can turn to be either on the logico-mathematical stake or on the alphabetical writing stake. Second, accounting for the teacher's action in terms of indication and institution techniques, allows tracking the moves of the joint attention about some specific objects and their associated signs. In any case, the signs as mediation tools allow the students to get a better control of their activity (Vygotski, 1931/1974) but the implementation of the Game shows that the function of these signs progressively arose from the collective practices, uses and agreements.

Expected Outcomes

Our presentation should outline different nested levels of analyses from the micro-dynamics of the didactical communication at some crucial turns of the collective practices, to macro-level analysis of the Game implementation over several months. The sociohistorical approach that we adopt accounts for the institutional codetermination of the stake that the participants ascribe to the Game, i.e. the framing of the status of signs and writings in the teaching habits at this school level, resulting from the didactical transposition process (Chevallard, 1985/1991).The didactical process should be related to the institutional norms that are crystallized within official teaching guidance texts, and that could influence the teacher's practices (Ligozat, 2008; Schubauer-Leoni & Leutenegger, pending). Changing scales of analysis provides various evidences of how the epistemological underlying assumption impacts the analytic outputs of the Treasure Game.

References

Brousseau, G. (1997). The theory of the didactical situations in mathematics. Dortrecht : Kluwer. Brousseau, G. (2004). Les représentations : étude en théorie des situations didactiques. Revue des sciences de l’éducation, vol XXX, no 3, 241-277. Caillot, M. (2007). The building of a new academic field : the case of the French Didactiques. European Educational Research Journal, 6 (2), 125-130. Chevallard Y. (1985/1991), La transposition didactique, du savoir savant au savoir enseigné. Grenoble : La Pensée Sauvage. Chevallard, Y. (2007). Readjusting didactics towards a changing epistemology. European Educational Research Journal, 6 (2), 131-134. Dewey, J. (1938/1997). Experience and education. New York : Touchstone Filliettaz, L. & Schubauer-Leoni, M.L. (2008) (Eds.). Processus interactionnels et situations éducatives. Coll. Raisons Educatives. Paris, Bruxelles : De Boeck Université. Forget, A. & Schubauer-Leoni, M.L. (2008). Inventer un code de désignation d’objets au début de la forme scolaire. Des productions personnelles à la convention collective. In L. Filliettaz & M.L. Schubauer-Leoni (Ed.) Processus interactionnels et situations éducatives (pp 183-204). Coll. Raisons Educatives. Paris, Bruxelles : De Boeck Université. Leutenegger, F. (2008). L’entrée dans un code écrit à l’école enfantine et l’articulation entre le collectif et l’individuel : comparaison de deux études de cas. Education & Didactique, Vol.2/2 7-42. Leutenegger, F. (sous presse). Le temps d’instruire. Approche clinique et expérimentale du didactique ordinaire en mathématique. A paraître aux Edition Peter Lang, Coll. Exploration. Ligozat, F. (2008). Un point de vue de Didactique Comparée sur la classe de mathématiques. Etude de l’action conjointe du professeur et des élèves à propos de l’enseignement / apprentissage de la mesiure de grandeurs dans des classes françaises et suisses romandes. Thèse de doctorat en sciences de l’éducation, FPSE, Université de Genève & U.F.R. Psychologie et sciences de l’éducation, Université de Provence. Mercier, A., Schubauer-Leoni, M.-L. & Sensevy, G. (eds) (2002). Vers une didactique comparée. Revue Française de Pédagogie, 141. [numéro spécial]. Lyon : INRP. Peres, J. (1984). Utilisation d’une théorie des situations en vue de l’identification des phénomènes didactiques au cours d’une activité d’apprentissage scolaire. Construction d’un code de désignation d’objets à l’école maternelle. Etudes en didactique des mathématiques. Institut de recherche pour l’enseignement des mathématiques. Université de Bordeaux I Schubauer-Leoni, M.L, Leutenegger, F. & Forget, A. (2007). Premières expériences cruciales de la forme scolaire: l’accès aux pratiques de fabrication de traces scripturales convenues. Education & Didactique, 1(2), 9-35. Schubauer-Leoni, M.L. & Leutenegger, F. (pending). Implicites dans l’étude des processus transpositifs. Comparaison de textes officiels pour l’enseignement des mathématiques et du français dans les premières années de scolarité. (soumis pour ouvrage suite au 3ème séminaire international Méthodes de recherche en didactiques. Questionner l’implicite, 15 juin 2008, Villeneuve d’Ascq) Vygotski, L.S. (1931/1974). Storia dello sviluppo delle funzioni psichiche superiori. Firenze : Giunti-Barbèra.

Author Information

Florence Ligozat

Université de Genève

Faculty of Psychology & Educational Sciences

Genève

Francia Leutenegger