Difficulties in Teaching Modelling: A French-Spanish Exploration

2017

An exploratory research study based on an online questionnaire in order to better understand difficulties encountered in teaching of mathematical modelling in France and Spain is presented. This questionnaire takes into account biographical variables, mathematics and modelling conceptions of pre-service teachers, teachers, researchers and education inspectors, from primary to tertiary education. Regarding difficulties, heterogeneous conceptions are revealed, and the analysis constructs four clusters, from positive and confident conceptions to negative and lacking confidence. In some cases, the roles of some biographical variables are indicated such as country, age, gender or school level th…