Study and Research Paths: a model for inquiry

This paper presents a line of research in didactics of mathematics developed during the past decade within the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic around what we call study and research paths (SRPs). SRPs are initially proposed as a study format based on the inquiry of open questions, which can be implemented at all educational levels, from pre-school to university, including teacher education and professional development. Additionally, they provide a general schema for analysing any kind of teaching and learning process, by especially pointing out the more or less explicit questions that lead the study process and the way new knowledge is built or introduced to elaborate answers to these questions. Current research on SRPs focuses on their didactic ecology, defined as the set of conditions required to generally implement SRPs at different educational levels, together with the constraints that hinder their development and dissemination.