This paper reports on an experiment involving 108 sixth-grade French students in which the history of Chinese numeration was used in mathematics education. The aim of this study is to evaluate the relevance of using ancient number systems in mathematics education, which is common in French textbooks. In the experiment a pre-test with usual…

In this paper, we provide an overall perspective on the teaching and learning of discrete mathematics. Our aim is to highlight what research has been conducted in this area and to connect it to existing research ideas for future work. We begin by characterizing discrete mathematics and its role in the school curriculum, highlighting themes,…

Numeration units (ones, tens, hundreds, etc.) are an epistemological foundation for place value. Here, we assume that they are a didactic support in countries where spoken numbers are incongruent with written numbers. In France, teaching practices neglect the relations between units, and numeration units are typically used only to designate the…

Wishing to explore the complexity of the conceptual, didactic and institutional aspects of learning a scientifically defined object of knowledge, we chose to study the link between the personal relation to numeration developed by six-year-old pupils in first grade ("cours preparatoire" the first level of primary school in France), and…

A fundamental question in developmental science is how brains with and without language compute numbers. Measuring young children's verbal reactions in Spain and Finland, we show that, although there is a general arithmetic ability for small numbers that is shared by monkeys and preverbal infants, the development of such initial knowledge in…