Abstract
In this chapter, we question the practices of school teachers in French Polynesia and French Guyana on the contextualisation of their teaching in space and geometry, and then we compare these practices. The teacher in his functions makes choices that are influenced by his knowledge, his beliefs and his knowledge of contexts. What representations do teachers have of the contextualisation of their teaching? Can we identify contextualisation practices specific to the territories? We filmed six teaching-learning sessions, three in each of the territories, and paired Polynesia and French Guiana on the basis of the common geometrical theme addressed. We completed these observations with six semi-directive interviews. The data thus collected allowed us to determine the professional knowledge and beliefs of the teachers according to the Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) model. We adapted the PCK model to the research by introducing elements of the contexts. It appears that teachers have very similar contextualisation practices in space and geometry from one territory to another. Contextualisation is essentially in reference to the micro-situational context of the pupil and of intermediate degree. The reference to socio-cultural and linguistic contexts is not very present and expressed only in terms of beliefs. It might be relevant to look at contextualisation practices in other mathematical domains at a time when contexts are explicitly entering teacher education. This could be a starting point for further research on the effects of contextualisation in mathematics teaching and learning.