Analyzes why the transfer of formal learning to outside school situations is problematical in principle and undependable in practice. Recommends an alternative approach for building bridges between practices based on analyzing the discourses involved as a system of signs and looking for appropriate points of inter-relation between them. (Contains…

Used are test and interview data to extract evidence as to what level tenth graders have coordinated the worlds of arithmetic and algebra and can move freely between them. More dissociation is shown than was expected. (Author/MVL)