From an early age, he wanted to become a primary school teacher, which he did for several years until he was recruited as an assistant at Bordeaux University.

Brousseau founded COREM (Centre pour l'Observation et la Recherche sur l'Enseignement des Mathématiques), which he ran from 1973 to 1998 at the Jules Michelet elementary school in Talence (Gironde).

He subsequently founded the LADIST (Laboratoire Aquitain de Didactique des Sciences et Techniques), which supported COREM.

He decided to create the CREM (Centre de Recherche pour l'Enseignement des Mathématiques) in Bordeaux following his meeting with André Lichnerowicz.

His research focuses on the teaching of natural and decimal numbers, probability, statistics, geometry, elementary algebra, logic and reasoning.