The particular and the general

Vicenç Font and Ángel Contreras wrote an article that was recently published in Educational Studies in Mathematics. The article is entitled "The problem of the particular and its relation to the general in mathematics education", and here is the abstract:

Research in the didactics of mathematics has shown the importance of the problem of the particular and its relation to the general in teaching and learning mathematics as well as the complexity of factors related to them. In particular, one of the central open questions is the nature and diversity of objects that carry out the role of particular or general and the diversity of paths that lead from the particular to the general. The objective of this article is to show how the notion of semiotic function and mathematics ontology, elaborated by the onto-semiotic approach to mathematics knowledge, enables us to face such a problem.