Glossary of the documentational approach. Definition of the main concepts of the documentational approach, extracted from various articles and book chapters.

Glossaire, in French

Document
The teacher, in her documentation work, for a given class of situations, draws on a set of resources of various natures. Introducing a new vocabulary, we consider that this set of resources bears, for this class of situations, a document, within a documentational genesis. The documentational genesis jointly develops a new resource (made up of a set of resources selected, modified, recombined) and a scheme of utilisation of this resource. We can represent this process, in a very simplified way, by the equation: Document = Resources + Scheme of utilisation (Gueudet & Trouche 2012, p. 25)

Documentation system
Within the framework of the instrumental approach, Rabardel & Bourmaud (2003) consider systems of instruments, whose structure depends on the structure of the subject’s professional activity. […] Drawing on this conceptualization, we consider that the documents of a teacher are articulated in a structured documentation system. (Gueudet & Trouche 2012, p. 27)

Documentation work
The teacher interacts with resources, selects them and works on them (adapting, revising, reorganizing etc.) within processes where design and enacting are intertwined. The expression documentation work encompasses all these interactions. We consider that documentation work is central in teachers’ professional activity. (Gueudet & Trouche 2012, p. 24)

Documentational genesis
The teacher, in her documentation work, for a given class of situations, draws on a set of resources of various natures. Introducing a new vocabulary, we consider that this set of resources bears, for this class of situations, a document, within a documentational genesis. The documentational genesis jointly develops a new resource (made up of a set of resources selected, modified, recombined) and a scheme of utilisation of this resource. (Gueudet & Trouche 2012, p. 25)


Reflective investigation
We present here briefly this methodology that we named the reflective investigation of the teacher’s documentation work. The main principles grounding this methodology are:
- a principle of long-term follow-up. Geneses are ongoing processes and schemes develop over long periods of time. This indicates the need for long-term observation, within practical constraints;
- a principle of in and out of class follow-up. The classroom is an important place, where the teaching elaborated is implemented. […] However, an important part of teachers’ work takes place beyond the students’ presence - at school, at home, in teacher development programs etc. We pay attention to all these different locations;
- a principle of broad collection of the material resources used and produced in the documentation work, throughout the follow-up;
- a principle of reflective follow-up of the documentation work. We closely involve the teacher in the collection of data, with the pragmatic aim of broad collection and in and out-of-class follow-up previously discussed.
(Gueudet & Trouche 2012, p. 27-28)


Resource
Adler (2000) proposes to consider as e resource « anything likely to re-source » the teacher’s practice ; we retain here a similar meaning of resources, encompassing materials and also all elements intervening « upstream » of teaching (e.g. emails with teachers, websites consulted, students’ work). (Gueudet, Pepin, & Trouche 2013, p.1003).


Resource system
The resource system of the teacher constitutes the « resource » part of her documentation system (i.e. without the scheme part of the documents). (Gueudet & Trouche 2012, p. 27)



References

Adler, J. (2000). Conceptualising resources as a theme for teacher education. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 3, 205–224
Gueudet, G., & Trouche, L. (2012a). Teachers’ work with resources : documentational geneses and professional geneses, in Gueudet, G., Pepin, B., & Trouche, L (Eds.), From text to ’lived resources’ : curriculum material and mathematics teacher development, (pp. 23- 41). New York : Springer.
Gueudet, G., Pepin, B., & Trouche, L. (2013). Collective work with resources : an essential dimension for teacher documentation. ZDM, The International Journal on Mathematics Education 45(7), 1003-1016.