Programmering i svensk skolmatematik : Programming in Swedish school mathematics

• When incorporating programming in the school curricula, Sweden decided to integrate it with mathematics, and specifically within the core content of algebra. As a result, all mathematics teachers at all levels were faced with the challenge of teaching programming. In this study we analyse documentation from 32 lesson studies where groups of teachers have planned, conducted, and revised lessons on programming within the school subject mathematics. To gain insight into how the teachers interpret the new task and thus contribute to the transposition of knowledge from the curriculum level to the classroom level, we analyse the mathematical content in these lessons and the relations between mathematics and programming that emerge in the way the teachers describe the aim, the activites and the learning outcomes of the lessons. We find that 1/3 of the lessons do not connect to any traditional mathematics content, and the rest of the lessons mostly focus on arithmetic or geometry. Few explicit connections are made to algebra, except for the variable concept, but when variables are treated the focus is on variables in the programming sense rather than algebra. Four different relationships between mathematics and programming emerge in the data: 1) programming without connecting to mathematics; 2) mathematics as a context for programming, 3)programming as a tool for efficient calculations; 4) programming as a tool for exploring mathematics.The results are discussed in relation to the transposition of knowledge of mathematics as a school subject. © 2021 University of Helsinki. All rights reserved.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Matematik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Mathematics (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Didaktik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Didactics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

mathematics

programming

school algebra

transposition of knowledge

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)