Le problème d'arithmétique dans renseignement des mathématiques à I'école primaire de 1887 à 1990

Abstract

Arithmetic has always been a favoured didactic instrument to teach mathematics, but its use has varied considerably since the end of the nineteenth century. The examination of tin functions which have been, given to it in plans for reform or in pedagogical positions is an analyser which enables us to see the dominant models of mathematics teaching. Four periods are defined: the first (1887 to 1938) is tiim-acterised by teaching in the form, of a lecture founded on ostension. Practical, fuintioiial and concrete, it aimed to transmit to the future citizen the basic arithmetic needed to solve standard problems inspired by social or domestic life. But the difficulties due to this type of teaching led teachers to teach only standard solution that pupils had to learn by heart rather than conceptualise. From 1938 to 1970, contradictions appeared between the official will, very utilitarian, in its aims anddogmatic in its methods, and the ideas of the theoreticians of new education A major break in 1970 led to the birth of a new scientific field the didactics of matliematics; the problem became the favoured means to give meaning to what, was taught. Ccgnitive psychlogy left, a strong mark on the eiglities: the processing of information took over from the construction of knowledge. This movement resulted in the establishment of a methodological form of teaching and led paradoxically, to a sort of de- mathematization, of teaching: to learn mathematics, it was no longer a question of getting pupils to solve problems but of teaching them to solve them. © Universite de Picardie Jules Vernes.