Contextualization and Decontextualization of Knowledge

Contextualization and Decontextualization of Knowledge

Mathematicians don't communicate thier results in the form in which they discover them; they re-organize them,they give them as genaral s form as possible. Mathematicians perform a "didactical practice" which consists of putting knowledge into a communicable, decontextualized, depersonalized, detemporalized form.

The teacher first undertakes the opposite action; a recontextualization and a repersonalization of knowledge. She looks for situations which can give meaning to the knowledge to be taught. But when the student has reponded to the proposed situation, if the personalization phase has gone well she does not know that she has "produced" a piece of knowledge that she will be able to use on other occasions. In order to transform her answers and knowledges into a body of knowledge, she will, with the assistance of the teacher, have to repersonalize and redecontextualize the knowledge which she has produced so that she can see that it has a universal character, and that it is a re-usable cultural knowledge.

One can easily see two aspects of the teacher's role which are rather contradictory: to bring knowledge alive, allowing students to produce it as a reasonable response to a familiar situation, and, in addition, to transform this "reasonable response" into an identified, unusual cognitive"outcome" recognized from outside.

There is a strong temptation for the teacher to short-circuit these two phases and to teach knowledge directly as if it were a cultural facy, thus saving the cost of this double manoeuvre. The knowledge is presented and students make it thier own as best they can.

Brousseau, G.(1997). Theory of Didactical Situation in Mathematics. Dordrect, Kluwer,p.227.