The incidence of ‘applicationism’ in the integration of mathe¬matical modelling at university teaching of natural sciences

Abstract

Recent research on the teaching and learning of mathematical modelling highlights the existence of strong institutional constraints on the widespread and long-term diffusion of modelling practices into current educational systems. The study of these constraints and the way new teaching proposals can overcome them appear as an unavoidable step for research in mathematics education. Within the framework of the Anthropological theory of the didactic, a hierarchy of levels of didactic codetermination is proposed as a tool to detect and analyse the emergence of these constraints, to know at what level it is necessary to act to improve the conditions for mathematical modelling to exist as a normalized activity. The problem is focused on the special case of the teaching of mathematics in Natural Science faculties, paying particular attention to the constraints arising from the ‘dominant epistemology’ in these institutions.