Designing Mathematical Programming Problems

The growing use of programming in mathematics classrooms presents a challenge linked to implementation in general and task design in particular. This article presents design ideas for mathematical problems incorporating programming in which the focus remains mainly on learning mathematics and less on learning programming. The article starts by reviewing the theoretical background for technology implementation and design, and then presents the methodology for the design, before exploring and discussing the design ideas with an in-depth example. Building on the idea of adidactical situations from the theory of didactical situations, the design illustrates a possible way of implementing programming in the mathematics classroom to facilitate mathematical learning.