The article investigates in the first part critically dyadic and essentialist understanding of signs and utterances in mathematics and mathematics education as opposed to a triadic view. However even Peircean semiotics, giving priority to triadic, dynamic sign may face challenges, such as explaining the sign as a pragmatic act and how signs are…

Learning is better than knowing, generalization is more illuminating than abstract generality or universality because we perceive and thus become conscious of change or development only. Signs and representations establish the dialectic of fixation on the one hand and transformation on the other, which is so essential to learning and cognition.…

Mathematical signs and symbols have a decisive role for coding, constructing and communicating mathematical knowledge. Nevertheless these mathematical signs do not already contain mathematical meaning and conceptual ideas themselves. The contribution will present basic elements of an epistemology of mathematical knowledge and then apply these…

This comment attempts to identify different "semiotic perspectives" proposed by the authors of this special issue according to the problems they discuss. These problems can be distinguished as problems concerning the representation of mathematical knowledge, the definition and objectivity of meaning, epistemological questions of learning and…

A semiotic perspective on mathematical activity provides a way of conceptualizing the teaching and learning of mathematics that transcends and encompasses both psychological perspectives focussing exclusively on mental structures and functions, and performance-focussed perspectives concerned only with student's behaviours. Instead it considers the…