The emergence of singularity in a didactic scene of a geometry class

Abstract

This article aims to recreate a situation in a classroom in which the teacher “distributes” the power of knowledge to students by means of a strategy that links spontaneous or previous knowledge to the knowledge addressed in order to foster the singularity of the subjects. Therefore, we use Bakhtin's notion of contact zone to defend the idea of creative communication as the possibility of appropriation of knowledge by the student through persuasive inner discourse, which originates in such dialogue. We show how, in this way, students become what Lave and Wenger call legitimate peripheral members of a community of practice, which here is the classroom. Then we consider the dynamics of the classroom through what Costa calls problematization, subverting the secular and/or cultural tradition of placing the teacher in the central position and students in peripheral positions. Finally, we consider this dynamic from the psychological point of view, showing, based on Valsiner's idea of internalization-externalization, how ready and built knowledge may acquire a personal and affective meaning for the student through the use of an example in a geometry class.