Abstract:

The National Scientific Degree Plan (PLS) is a national intervention plan developed by the Italian Ministry of Education (MIUR) in 2004 and is aimed at promoting enrollment in scientific degree courses, carrying out training initiatives, support and monitoring the activities of high school students and provide opportunities for professional growth for in service teachers of scientific disciplines.

In 2017, MIUR launched the Guidance and Tutoring Plan (POT) that extend the active and participatory approach to guidance and tutoring to all degree courses. In particular, the POTs are organized around thematic intervention groups in synergy between more degree courses in a constantly evolving world of university and work that requires increasingly targeted and interdisciplinary career guidance and assistance projects.

The ministerial indications relating to the Final Exam of Scientific High Schools lead to orient the preparation of students in a perspective of integrated sciences, where mathematics is seen as universal language of the scientific world. The focal point is the modeling and the reconstruction of mathematical meanings in formal representation. From the national indications emerges the choice to focus attention on reasoning, concepts, argumentative ability with respect to the execution of long and repetitive calculations. New technologies provide valuable assistance in carrying out activities and since 2017 the MIUR allowed the use of graphical calculators without symbolic algebraic calculation (NO CAS). this choice has changed the attitude of teachers and students towards this tool.

Following the ministerial indications, in the academic year 2020-2021 the research group in education of the Department of Mathematics of the University of Salerno (Italy) has therefore chosen to design a laboratory path in PLS-POT activities centered on analysis and resolution of problems contextualized in situations of reality that involve the scientific fields of the various school disciplines. The activities are faced and developed through the use of graphing calculators thanks to the possibility that they offer to approach mathematical contents from different points of view, numerical, analytical, graph. Students approached to the use of the graphing calculator heuristically: they were not provided with preset cards to be copied slavishly, the commands and menus were illustrated in the first meeting and then we proceeded to the resolution of reality problems. At first students were left free to experiment with solutions and then proposing solutions that approached the problems from different points of view: numerical, algebraic, graphical, tabular.

The analysis of the evaluation forms compiled by students at the end of the laboratory activities highlighted the great enthusiasm both for the topics covered and for the methodologies used in the exploration of the contents addressed.

Keywords:

Graphing calculator, heuristic exploration, reality problems, laboratory activities, technology enhanced learning.