Metafora ed Analogia in Didattica della Matematica

This paper is a report that concerns two experiments that I proposed in nine secondary school classes (pupils from fourteen to eighteen years old) in order to test some hypotesis concerning the use of metaphor during teaching-learning processes. I begin by analyzing the different significances of the concepts of metaphor and analogy that can be found in literature. Then I try to frame these concepts within the framework of semiotic mediation. I show some excerpts taken from the experimentations, and I try to interpret some of pupil’s utterances (words, gestures) as metaphors which offer to the teacher a possible way (by analogies) to introduce mathematical contents. I conclude with some open questions that concern the possible roles that metaphor could play in teaching-learning processes.