Definition
In order to define instrumentation in the context of mathematics education, it is necessary to define instruments: at this stage of this article, we do not differentiate between instruments and artifacts, i.e., we regard them as things that are created and used by humans to help, assist, support, enlarge, and empower their activity. Instrumentation is the action to give someone an instrument, or the process by which someone acquires an instrument, in order to perform a given activity. The notion of instrumentation is part of a network of concepts; we will focus here on the main dialectical relationships between them.
Instrumentation and Instruction
Contrary to the common perception that mathematics is a pure mental activity, the importance of instruments in mathematical activity has been largely acknowledged: “the development of mathematics has always been dependent upon the material and symbolic tools available for mathematics computations” (Artigue 2002, p. 245). What is...
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Ghislaine Gueudet and Birgit Pepin for their reading of the preliminary version of this article and their inspiring comments.
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Trouche, L. (2014). Instrumentation in Mathematics Education. In: Lerman, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Mathematics Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4978-8_80
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