Diagrams and in general the use of visualization and manipulative material play an important role in mathematics teaching and learning processes. Although several authors warn that mathematics objects should be distinguished from their possible material representations, the relations between these objects are still conflictive both from an…

The semiotic approach to mathematics education introduces the notion of "semiotic system" as a tool to describe mathematical activity. The semiotic system is formed by the set of signs, the production rules of signs and the underlying meaning structures. In this paper, we present the notions of system of practices and configuration of objects and…

The main objective of this paper is to apply the onto-semiotic approach to analyze the mathematical concept of different coordinate systems, as well as some situations and university students' actions related to these coordinate systems. The identification of objects that emerge from the mathematical activity and a first intent to describe an…