Cooperation of teachers and researchers in the construction of knowledge in the teaching of mathematics: experiences in preschool and secondary school in Mexico

Abstract

This article reviews the joint construction of didactic-mathematical knowledge in two investigations involving teachers and researchers at the preschool and secondary levels in Mexico. In the preschool research, we studied the transformations made by two teachers to didactic situations involving data analysis as they implemented them with their students. Educators and researchers collaborated to enhance the didactic designs, ensuring they were more suitable for regular classroom instruction (Laguna, 2016). The findings indicated that these modifications did not compromise the core objectives of the didactic sequences; rather, they added depth to their significance. The study in secondary school aimed to address the school teaching of geometry through the analysis and implementation of a short sequence of three didactic situations for the study of some geometric figures and the characteristics that determine the congruence of two triangles (Castaño, 2021). We analyze the mathematical-didactic knowledge generated through the collaboration between researchers and teachers, focusing on the key episodes that shaped transformative experiences for the teachers involved.

Even though the experiences were not considered Cooperative Engineering (Sensevy et al., 2013), in both investigations, joint planning, classroom implementation by teachers, and subsequent analysis were placed at the center of the work dynamics between researchers and teachers. The collaboration that emerged had different nuances in each research. In preschool, it was not a central element foreseen by the teachers. Still, forms of joint work were developed that helped us to understand the transformations of the didactic sequences and the factors that originated them. For the secondary level, the collaborative approach (Desgagné et al., 2001) was the methodological strategy that allowed us to explore a device of teacher professional development through the analysis and implementation of didactic situations.

For this article, we selected episodes from the discussions that took place in the collective meetings of the two studies and reviewed them based on three principles of CE: the engineering stance, the search for symmetry, and the ascent from the abstract to the concrete (Santini et al., 2024). The results show the nuances of cooperation and how it resulted in the construction of joint knowledge, which led us to rethink our research based on the contributions of CE. We believe that the analysis presented enriches the discussion about the modalities of collaborative work between teachers and researchers and raises questions for further studies.