Abstract
Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) is a didactic approach to teaching school mathematics through meaningful contexts. This method involves transposing the discipline of mathematics into a special kind of mathematics for students, or vice versa where students mathematize the contexts and engage in learning mathematics. Alternatively, traditional teaching models involve the transfer of mathematical knowledge held by the teacher to the students who are recipients of the knowledge. A scholarly approach of teachers and researchers teaching these two different methods merits a detailed examination. In light of this need, this study investigates two teachers’ experiences of the use and implementation of both an RME approach and a traditional teaching method with the same instructional goal of solving quadratic optimization problems. The findings of this study suggest that various forms and transformations of the knowledge of the Didactic Transposition theory emerged as an important area in the design and implementation of a mathematics lesson. In particular, the RME approach afforded students with diverse backgrounds rich opportunities to engage in mathematics and produce productive mindsets toward mathematics. Further, our findings illustrate how the teachers engaged in a professional discourse for the lesson analysis, and how they reflected on the ways that a teaching method could present challenges, barriers or opportunities in the classroom. We concluded that the implementation of two conflicting pedagogies could serve as a meaningful opportunity of learning, whereby teachers were able to connect the Didactic Transposition theory to practice, and reflect on the pedagogical realities of teaching school mathematics.
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