Expanding Contexts for Teaching Upper Secondary School Geometry

Abstract

This chapter describes how the theatrical performance based on the history of mathematics—‘An Amazing Story: The Measurement of the Earth by Eratosthenes’—created the opportunity of a ‘third,’ expanding learning space, which allowed for new practices and tools to emerge. It also permitted students to approach mathematical concepts in an experiential way and (re)negotiate their own learning processes, their conceptions of mathematical Discourse, and the nature of mathematics. We analyze a one semester-long, interdisciplinary, didactical intervention for 10th grade students in a public school in Athens, where different funds of knowledge and Discourses expanded the boundaries of the official school Discourse. Our aim is to show how an experiential way of integrating the history of mathematics—a theatrical performance based on history—can create a ‘third,’ expanded learning space, where new tools and new Discourses are applied.