Transition from dynamic to static digital artifacts to promote meta-level learning: A case study with scales and early algebraic discourse

This study explores the use of digital artifacts to support students’ introduction to algebraic discourse. By adopting a discursive framework, we investigate narratives and routines emerging in middle school students’ discourse who interact with digital artifacts representing scales in task situations requiring to determine the value of unknown weights. Activities were designed to move from dynamic scales that provide feedback to users’ actions to static scales where feedback is inhibited. Analysis shows that dynamic scales fostered the emerging of a variety of different procedures, and the transition to static scales prompted students’ discussion on the procedures themselves and their functioning, moving in this way their discourse on a meta-level.