Abstract
How is the content of university programmes selected and structured? How does it evolve? In the anthropological theory of the didactic, external didactic transposition designates the processes through which knowledge to be taught is delimited and developed for delivery within a school institution, including universities. This paper presents a first international comparative research project focused on the external didactic transposition in European and Canadian undergraduate programmes in mathematics. The project aims at analyzing the factors that motivate the evolutions of the programmes, the procedures to develop them, as well as the constraints that limit broader modifications and can explain their current state. The exploratory study presented in this paper considers 10 case studies from universities in Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, and Spain. Data is mainly collected from semi-structured interviews with faculty having participated in recent design of undergraduate mathematics programmes and syllabi. We identify both similarities and differences between programmes and syllabi, with the differences being relatively significant between Canadian and European universities when it comes to the overall structure of programmes, and less visible when considering the European programmes, as well as the processes in general.