Interdisciplinarity in upper secondary mathematics: a longitudinal curriculum analysis across two generations of syllabi and its implications for instructional design

Abstract

Abstract. Why do so few upper secondary graduates recognise, outside the mathematics classroom, the structures practised for years inside it? The article argues that school mathematics suffers not from a deficit of content but from one of context and coordination. A longitudinal curriculum analysis of the Romanian syllabi for grades 9–12, across two generations of documents, identifies twelve conceptual nodes distributed along four axes. Observable indicators and three modes of implementation are added to the IMIA didactic model and illustrated through two lessons. Modelling emerges not as a compromise between rigour and relevance, but as the point where they coincide.