An overview of "bridging courses" from the ATD perspective

The presence of bridging courses in the European university panorama has evolved from a simple spontaneous proposal to being part of a consolidated resource for new students in many universities. In Spain, the tendency points to the usual presence of thesecourses in almost all degrees containing mathematics in their first year. The analysis of different «bridging courses» led us to formulate the hypothesis that, due to the large number of mathematical praxeologies introduced and the type of didactic praxeologies used, they seem to contribute to increase the isolation and rigidity of mathematical praxeologies studied at secondary level (Serrano 2013). From the ATD, we have designed and experimented a course that tries to overcome this isolation by proposing connecting elements in the terms introduced by Fonseca (2004).