Formazione degli insegnanti per un approcio socio-costruttivo all’early algebra: studio di un caso

In this paper we trace the changes of perspective occurred in algebra teaching, sketching the recent trends and discussing the increasingly more complex role played by the teacher. We present our methodology of work with teachers aimed at improving their ability to promote the development of the students’ algebraic thinking and we introduce the multi-commented classroom transcripts (MT), seen as a useful tool to foster teachers’ ability to orchestrate early algebra discussions and to critically observe their own actions in the classroom. We report an MT excerpt and we analyse the related comments highlighting behaviours and awareness emerged in the teacher. We conclude with some remarks about the value of our methodology and about the conditions which determine its efficacy.