What does it mean to “grasp the rectangle”? Organization of linguistic formulation and activation of argumentative processes in geometrical problems

Giorgio Bolondi; Laura Branchetti; Clelia Cascella; Chiara Giberti

doi:10.3389/feduc.2023.1250661

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What does it mean to “grasp the rectangle”? Organization of linguistic formulation and activation of argumentative processes in geometrical problems

Authors

Bolondi, Giorgio¹
Branchetti, Laura²
Cascella, Clelia^{3, 4}
Giberti, Chiara⁵

¹ Faculty of Education, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano , (Italy)
² Department of Mathematics “Federigo Enriques”, University of Milan, Milan , (Italy)
³ Department of test development, Istituto nazionale per la valutazione del sistema educativo di istruzione e di formazione (INVALSI), Rome , (Italy)
⁴ Manchester institute of education, School of Education, Environment and Development, The University of Manchester, Manchester , (United Kingdom)
⁵ Department of human and social science, University of Bergamo, Bergamo , (Italy)

Type

Published Article

Journal

Frontiers in Education

Publisher

Frontiers Media S.A.

Publication Date

Sep 08, 2023

Volume

8

Identifiers

DOI: 10.3389/feduc.2023.1250661

Source

Frontiers

Keywords

Disciplines

Education
Original Research

License

Green

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether and how the verbal formulation of a task influences the activation of argumentative processes in a geometrical word problem involving figural concepts. The study adopts a multilevel explanatory mixed methods research design. Both the quantitative and qualitative experiments were based on a paradigmatic situation of figural concept proposed by Fischbein. Our main quantitative result is that different formulations of a task impact on students’ performance and on the selection of an argumentative or operational option. Moreover, we qualitatively investigated the students’ approaches, and this allowed to observe a variety of approaches ranging from a completely operational one to an argumentative one. The analysis highlighted interesting facts about the integration of sentential information and diagrams and the students’ strategies.

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