The article poses an interesting problem for me. Is the result of the abstraction
process one and the same generalizations for all the participants? How common, how
general are certain generalizations? Jurow cites approvingly Latour: “….generalizations
are not objective, but are shaped by who states them, how they are connected to other
claims …” (page 282). How does this relate to the aims of education? Math teachers
wants their students to work with the same general structure, I suppose? Teachers
offer guidance to make sure that everybody generalizes and comes in the end to the
same abstraction. To reach the first aim the object of the activity in the lessons is
generalizing. And inscriptions and the questions teachers provide for the process of
conjecturing form an instrument for guidance in the “right direction”.
But what about the individual(??), situational(??) influences on generalizations, that
Latour mentions?
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