Conditions for revitalizing the elementary algebra curriculum

Abstract

Elementary algebra has been the bedrock of science and technology for centuries. But taught algebra today is much more a set of formal exercises than a modelling tool. The present study focuses on the notion of formula and how its curricular evolution appears to be a witness and a cause of the degradation of taught algebra as a modelling tool. This examination involves careful analyses of curricular facts that seem not to have attracted the full attention of researchers, such as the vanishing of parameters from algebraic equations. Drawing on the anthropological theory of the didactic (ATD), we outline the perspective of an imperative revitalization of the elementary algebra curriculum. Data used in the study include curriculum materials such as textbooks from different countries and various types of publications on school algebra by authors influential in their time.