A study of the process of teaching and learning the notion of dimension in mathematics

Abstract

This article studies the issues that arise when teaching of the notion of dimension in school, from the perspective of three different approaches: historic-epistemological, school-discourse and cognitive. Elements of didactical interest about the learning and teaching of dimension are explicitly identified and described. The study, in which 70 high-school students participated, finds that the concept is scarcely treated in school due to an insufficient epistemological basis; in particular, in high-school there is an «institutional invisibility» of sorts due to a shortage of ideas and concept images available to the students. To promote the learning of the notion of dimension, appropriate requirements to be developed during the school years are determined and studied.