Calculus Artefacts in Chinese Textbooks: Variational Approaches with Prospective Primary Teachers

The first part of 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 lens 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 on the he 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 second part of the paper, we particularly focus on one of the stimuli proposed in the PD’s path: the Chinese “variation” as a systematic method adopted in Chinese textbooks. In this context, we concentrate our analysis on the use of three counting art artifacts as the Abacus, the Straws, and the Chinese abacus, the Suanpan (算盘).