Inquiry and Modeling for Teaching Mathematics in Interdisciplinary Contexts: How Are They Interrelated?

Abstract

International research has pointed out the importance of integrating mathematical modeling and inquiry processes into the teaching and learning of mathematics. This paper aims to present an integrative model that enables analyzing the characteristics inquiry and modeling processes share in the same model with a view to using them when designing and implementing interdisciplinary teaching sequences. After presenting a synthesis of the literature review, our theoretical approach to inquiry and modeling for the analysis of an interdisciplinary teaching sequence will be introduced. We focus here on the case of an inquiry situation in an archaeological context where mathematics and history are interrelated. It was implemented at secondary school level with students aged 13–14. We use this particular case study to analyze the appearance of both processes, in order to look for coincidences, concatenations and synergies. The main result is an integrative model for the joint analysis of both processes.

Keywords

• inquiry
• mathematical modeling
• integrative model
• interdisciplinary contexts