Abstract:
In this paper, we approach the student mathematics activity that addresses a “problem” by replacing the idea of “problem solving” by that of problematizing mathe matically. This reformulation corresponds to a change in perspective on the epistemological level – it seeks to highlight the idea that faced with a task, the student answers the question he asks himself. We illustrate this paradigm shift with various examples and show how the activity of problematizing mathematically is itself in constant movement, revealing all the importance of a perspective that considers the point of view of the observer (whether student, teacher or researcher, for example). Taking its source in part from the theory of enaction, this proposal leads us to take a look at the mathematical activity based on doing mathematics (see Maheux & Proulx, 2014), rather than in reference to what would be “mathematically sound” in a kind of disembodied absolute.
