Abstract

With the Reform of school autonomy in the nineties, and later with the most recent education legislations, it was attempted to trigger processes of change with regard to mathematics and its teaching but these changes have proved difficult to implement. Through the perspective of the Actor-Network Theory in education and Science and Technology Studies, this paper aims to analyze the role that the materiality covers in the construction of teaching strategies of this discipline. Starting from an multi-sited ethnography study held in five high schools in Rome, the use of some common classroom artifacts, such as blackboards and textbooks, will be specifically considered to show how their use/non-use can facilitate the activation of different forms of mathematical knowledge. The paper concludes with some reflections resulting from research on innovation in mathematics education.