Mathematical competencies in a role-play activity

This paper concerns a competencies-based analysis of the outcomes of a role-play activity aimed to foster conceptual understanding of mathematics for first year engineering students. The teacher role has been considered in order to investigate the competencies addressed by the questions created by the students and their matching with the activity’s educational goal. The analysis shows that the quality of the posed questions made by the students highlights the moving from the instrumental approach, the students are used to, towards a relational one.