Actions of recognition

2024-04-25: Inauguration of Plaça M. Antònia Canals i Tolosa in the city of Girona, by the Mayor Ll. Salellas

Brief summary of its work

Innovation in primary school mathematics education in Catalonia started with M. Antònia Canals, who carried out an immense amount of applied research in and for schools. The data in her writings, which spanned from the late 1960s until well into the 21st century, have been complied in numerous bibliographical reviews, such as the book M. Antònia i Canals: El compromís amb la renovació de l’escola (Alsina and Soler, 2005), which discusses her entire body of work, piece by piece, up to 2004, or, more recently, the doctoral thesis Didáctica de las matemáticas y desarrollo profesional de una maestra (Sotos, 2015).

M. Antònia Canals, heavily inspired by internationally renowned authors such as Maria Montessori, Alexandre Galí, Zoltan P. Dienes, Frédérique Papy, Lucienne Felix and Jean Piaget, built up a body of knowledge specific to early childhood and primary school mathematics education in Catalonia, mainly drawing on the firm conviction that teaching needed to promote children’s interaction with hands-on materials.

One of the texts that best reflects her approach to children’s mathematics education is her manual on mathematics didactics for early childhood education teachers, written in Catalan and entitled Per una Didàctica de la Matemàtica a l’escola. I. Parvulari (Canals, 1989). In this manual, which was strongly inspired by Piagetian ideas, she organised children’s mathematical knowledge into three types of mental activities, associated respectively with physical knowledge (identifying) and mathematical knowledge (relating and operating). In doing so, she wanted to make it clear that children first identify or recognise, for example, the quantities of elements in specific situations (with materials, drawings, etc.) and can then compare them (on the basis of equivalence and order relations) and operate with them. She extended this approach to numbers and calculation to content related to logic, measurement and geometry, thus offering an overall view that highlighted the connections between mathematical content of an apparently different nature.

Towards the end of her career, and thanks to her being awarded the Jaume Vicens Vives Prize for University Teaching in 2001 by the Government of Catalonia, she devised and launched the Materials and Research Centre for Mathematics in Schools (GAMAR), currently part of the M. Antònia Canals Chair of Mathematics Education, where she compiled a wide selection of materials to work on these aspects.

M. Antònia Canals died on 29 April 2022, leaving a great legacy.