Mediating mathematics teaching development and pupils’ mathematics learning: the life cycle of a task

A developmental research project in Norway, Learning Communities in Mathematics (LCM), a collaboration between university and schools, uses mathematical tasks as a basis for developing community in project workshops and for teachers’ design of tasks for classrooms. An aim in the project is that teachers and didacticians, through inquiry into design and use of tasks and reflection on and analysis of their use, will learn more about creating effective learning situations for pupils in mathematics. The processes involved are exemplified through an account of the design and use of the Mirror Task. An activity theory analysis traces the elements of learning of participants, teachers and didacticians, and highlights tensions, their nature and origins, in project activity and that of the established communities of school and university.