Perspectives sur les recherches en didactique des mathématiques

The paper is a review of chosen approaches to research in mathematics education in several countries: Germany, France, United States, Russia, Poland, Canada. The review is done in the literary form of a satire, in which a character is taken on a voyage to a variety of “islands” respresenting different research interests and methodologies in mathematics education. The story is a parody of Homer’sOdyssee, and the main character is called Odysseus. Odysseus’ role is played by the famous arithmetic problem about a team of an unknown number of scythers who are given the task of scything two meadows one of which is double the size of the other. As the problem travels from one “island” to another, mathematics educators do different things to and with the problem and it is solved is a variety of ways. The main text of the paper reads as a story and there are no explicit references and names of authors, whose work is only alluded to. However, the solution to all allusions, i.e. explicit references, can be found in the footnotes.