Patterns of didactic intentions, thought collective and documentation work

Abstract

In this chapter, I present a conceptual framework aimed at understanding how teachers’ intentions are shaped by the collectives in which they work. I first lay out a general external conception of intentions, relying principally on Baxandall’s work (1985, Patterns of intention: On the historical explanation of pictures. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Intentions are not first in the head of agents, but primarily in the milieu in which these agents live, in the social games they play. I then apply this general model to didactic intentions. I show how prior intentions must be concretized, within the joint didactic action, into local intentions in action. In this perspective, prior intentions may be seen as strategic rules that gain their actual meaning in effective concrete strategies. I present a case study of such a conceptualization of didactic intentions in primary mathematics education. I show how the shaping of intentions depends on the documentation work of the teachers, and how the meaning-making process involved in such work relies upon a specific thought style (Fleck, Genesis and development of a scientific fact. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976). In effect, in this case study, a particular collective that brings together teachers and researchers elaborates upon a specific thought style grounded in the collaborative design of research devices.