Didactic use of cinema in Mathematics

• Main Author: Pablo BELTRÁN PELLICER
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca 2014-10-01
• Series: Enseñanza & Teaching
• Subjects: situaciones didácticas; transposición didáctica; cine; matemáticas
• Online Access: https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/0212-5374/article/view/9871

The use of cinema as didactical resource in the Mathematics classroom has interested several authors and teachers during the last years, mainly because of its power to motivate students. On this point, suggestive compilations of scenes containing mathematical references, detailed analysis of movies closely related to Mathematics and even didactical materials to be used in the classroom have been developed. This article proposes a theoretical framework for designing classroom sequences based on the didactical situation which can arise from movies or fiction series scenes. In order to develop such a framework, we follow a didactical engineering process, taking into account some specific characteristics, as the one related to the didactical transposition, as it is required to consider the mathematic knowledge within the chosen scene, overall the way it appears. As well, a classroom experience is described, designed following the mentioned guidelines and implemented in the course of a collaborative project between two secondary education centers, where a significant motivation increase has been detected, due to using mathematical situations from the real world (or from fictional contexts but which can be easily assimilated by the students). There was also evidence about the fact that the designed didactical sequences allow to reduce the cognitive gap required to acquire certain mathematical concepts, because of the scenes provide additional information within an extra-mathematical context. Therefore, our proposal establishes some basic considerations in order to efficiently design didactical sequences using movie scenes as a resource, underlining its power to motivate as well as its facilitating ability when introducing new mathematical concepts to our students.