Contemporary Research Practices in Discrete Mathematics - A way to enrich the understanding of Discrete Mathematics at University Level

International audienceThis paper is part of a thesis about discrete mathematics and its teaching in higher education. The work of literature on the didactics of discrete mathematics questions this branch at different levels: its integration in teaching, the particularity of its affective dimension, and its epistemological specificities especially in the fields of proof and modeling. We seek to epistemologically define this field and to characterize its corresponding mathematical activity by studying the processes of knowledge construction, the types of problems, the specificity of concepts and proofs, and also the existing links between discrete mathematics and other disciplines. This epistemological study has a didactic purpose for defining and analyzing the teaching of discrete mathematics in higher education