Authors: Ghislaine Gueudet ¹; Nathalie Lebrun ²; Fabrice Vandebrouck ²

• 1 Etudes sur les sciences et les techniques
• 2 Université Paris Cité [UPCité]

This text reports on a workshop of the DEMIMES thematic school, the aim of which was to discuss how didactic theories can equip teachers in higher education to analyse exercises and problems texts and anticipate student difficulties. We present an analysis of a first-year university physics problem using theoretical tools from mathematics didactics: the anthropological theory of the didactic and the activity theory specific to didactics. We have chosen a Newtonian mechanics problem concerning the fall of a ball in a liquid, whose mathematical treatment involves vectors and a differential equation. We introduce the theoretical tools used and the problem chosen, then present the analyses, and discuss the contributions of the two theories. The workshop also showed that didactic analyses could shed light on the differences between the mathematics used in mathematics courses and those used in physics courses at university.