La tombola Infernale: informal mathematical contexts to facilitate interdisciplinarity and argumentation.

The Covid-19 pandemic emergency has exacerbated educational inequalities and stimulated the search for new teaching practices aimed at fostering inclusion and meaningful learning. Within this context, the project “La tombola Infernale” was conceived as an experiment grounded in the paradigm of Informal Mathematics Education (IME) and the Design-Based Research (DBR) methodological framework. Developed with students from Neapolitan secondary schools, the project integrates mathematical and literary knowledge through the creation of an original game inspired by Dante’s Inferno. The activity aims to reduce the gap between educational theory and classroom practice by promoting participatory, interdisciplinary learning. The proposed workshop invites participants to reconstruct the mathematical criterion underlying the association of numbers and characters within the game, analysing the roles of various mathematical proof functions as identified by de Villiers (1990)—from explanation to discovery and communication.