Didactique Goes Travelling: Its Actual and Potential Articulations with Other Traditions of Research on the Learning and Teaching of Mathematics

The French tradition of research on the learning and teaching of mathematics, often referred to simply as didactique, has developed a range of theoretical tools. These tools share a common intellectual and professional hinterland, and although each is honed to analysis of particular types of didactical question, they have increasingly been used by French researchers in coordinated ways. As this movement towards a more systematically articulated didactique has developed within France, ideas from didactique have become sources of inspiration or points of reference for researchers outside France. Fresh questions have naturally arisen about the central concepts of didactique as new professional cultures and their associated intellectual traditions are encountered. At the Artigue colloquium, the last two authors of this chapter convened a round-table discussion to explore this issue. Each of the first four authors contributed by bringing a particular perspective inspired both by their professional contacts with Michèle Artigue and their own interests and experience.