THE CONCEPT OF SERIES: TEACHERS' CONCEPTIONS AND TEACHING PRACTICES

The concept of series has many applications and is necessary to define other mathematical concepts. However, our research shows that the textbooks used in postsecondary education in Quebec often introduce numerical series in an algorithmic, decontextualised way. Taking into consideration this situation, we aimed to portray how postsecondary teachers introduce this concept, whether they follow the approaches outlined in textbooks, or whether teachers offer a richer approach. Our data, collected from interviews with five postsecondary teachers, show that teachers' practices remain quite formal and algorithmic, with little variation in the choice of tasks for the students, few examples and applications, and almost no coordination of different registers of representation.