Problems with variation: an educational experience of cultural transposition with prospective primary teachers

The paper presents some theoretical reflections and some methodological notes about a Professional Development (PD) path worked out during the last two years by Italian researchers for prospective Primary teachers. The theoretical construct of Cultural Transposition defines the framework of the PD path’s activities and the related research. It was used to define an interesting cultural lent to delineate possible new approaches for effective pre-service teacher education programs, in particular for the Primary level. The defined methodology was based on the possibility to reflect about the decentralization of didactic practices based on a specific cultural context through one or more contacts with other “realities” coming out from different selected cultural contexts. In the last section of the paper we argue that the contact with a different didactic perspective coming from the Chinese “problems with variation” (one of the stimuli proposed in the PD’ path), encouraged some reflections by the Italian pre-service teachers on the use of “variation” in Math word-problems for an early approach to Algebra in Primary level.