Giving effective instructional explanations is one of the most important teacher competences. Recent di dactic literature provides, however, little insight on teacher explanations. In our previous work we devel- oped guidelines for designing comprehensible explanations in the field of business (teacher) education, which are along general lines transferable to other subject areas and target audiences. In this article, we first compare our guidelines to the state of research in general and mathematics didactics. We then in vestigate their applicability to teaching operations research at university level, based on interviews with professors of the international operations research community.

Nowadays, mathematics is an elementary study area. A person who has not encountered it is hard to find. However, students often loathe mathematics and are afraid of it. Goal of this term project is to design and analyze software for mathematics education for elementary school, middle school, and high school students. We describe the motivation behind the software and its functionality. The software will be used solely for self-study. We attempt to create software which would ensure that students are not afraid of mathematics and that they enjoy their studies.

Dans ce travail de recherche, nous nous intéressons à une étude didactique de l’arithmétique au sens de théorie élémentaire des nombres dans l’objectif d'étudier certains choix de l'enseignement de l’arithmétique en France depuis le début du XX° siècle et d'identifier certaines contraintes institutionnelles après la réintroduction de l’arithmétique dans l’enseignement secondaire au début du XX1° siècle, ainsi que les effets de ces contraintes sur la pratique des enseignants et les acquis des élèves. Nous avons tout d'abord conduit une analyse épistémologique pour décrire les organisations mathématiques et les choix de définitions dans le savoir savant, que nous avons complété par un état des lieux sur les travaux antérieurs dans le monde anglo-saxon d’une part, et dans les travaux français d’autre part. Nous conduisons ensuite une analyse institutionnelle de l’arithmétique dans une perspective écologique pour dégager les différents systèmes de contraintes et de conditions qui pèsent sur les évolutions de ce savoir au cours du processus de transposition didactique interne, en analysant les programmes et les manuels dans deux institutions : au collège et en classe de seconde à partir de la réforme de 1902, jusqu’en 2010. Nous cherchons dans les programmes et les manuels des traces des organisations mathématiques de référence au collège et en classe de seconde pour l’objet d’arithmétique et les différents types de définitions. Nous poursuivons par une étude des rapports personnels des enseignants et des élèves aux objets de savoir en jeu en classe de seconde, pour confronter ensuite les réponses des enseignants avec la réponse de leurs élèves. Nos travaux montrent une très grande instabilité des contenus d’arithmétique dans le curriculum français au collège et à la transition collège/ lycée. / In this research, we are interested in a didactic study of the arithmetical contents, where arithmetic refers to elementary theory of numbers. We aimed to study choices of the teaching of arithmetic in France from the early XXth century and to identify institutional constraints for the reintroduction of arithmetic in the secondary education that occurred in the early XXIth and their effects on teaching practices and students’ experiences. First, we lead an epistemological analysis to describe the different mathematical organizations, and definitions that should be chosen for the teaching of arithmetic that we have completed with a review of previous researches in the Anglo-Saxon world on one hand, and in the French works on the other hand. We lead then an institutional analysis of the arithmetic in an ecological perspective to reveal different systems of constraints and conditions that should have an influence on the evolutions of this knowledge during the process of internal didactic transposition, by analyzing the programs and the textbooks in two institutions: Middle school and the fifth year of High school, from the reform of 1902 till 2010, tracking the mathematical organizations and the definitions. Second, we lead a study of the personal relationships of teachers and students regarding the arithmetical concepts involved in fifth year of high school through two questionnaires, including a comparison between teachers’ answers and the answers of their own pupils. A main result of our research is the great instability of the arithmetical content in the French curriculum at Middle school and at the transition from Middle school into High school.

The goal of this diploma thesis is to gather and describe ways the optimisation problems had been solved before the calculus was invented. Some of the methods identified through history are generalised and these which could be utilised at secondary or primary school education are described more in depth. Thesis descri- bes the method, where educator follows historical development of the problem in classroom and what benefits it might bring, as well. There is a section dedicated to evaluation of experiment which goal was to investigate understanding of pupils to certain concepts in the field of optimisation, mainly concerning isoperimetric problem. It was also focused on the pupils fe- edback to different approaches of optimisation problem solving. 1