Prospective secondary mathematics teachers read Clairaut: professional knowledge and original sources
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Prospective secondary mathematics teachers read Clairaut: professional knowledge and original sources Alberto Arnal-Bailera 1
& Antonio M. Oller-Marcén
2
Accepted: 9 September 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
The use of original sources is a useful resource not only to be used with secondary school students but also with prospective mathematics teachers. In this work, we designed a series of tasks based on a fragment excerpted from Clairaut’s Éléments de Géométrie to be carried out with 24 participants enrolled on a Masters’ Degree in Secondary School Mathematics Teaching. This fragment was chosen both due to its content and to its narrative structure and our main goal was to determine which elements of professional knowledge were used by prospective secondary mathematics teachers when reading this fragment. In order to do so, we used the MKT model as an analytical tool and we also assessed some aspects related to literacy skills. The prospective teachers were able to recognize mathematical and pedagogical components within the source that relate to their future practice. In addition, the participant’s literacy skills seem to play a role in the richness of their reading. Keywords Mathematics teacher training . Professional competence . Original sources . MKT . Literacy skills . Clairaut
1 Introduction The use of history of mathematics in the context of Mathematics Education is not a new idea and it can be traced back, at least, to the final years of the nineteenth century. However, it has been during the last 50 years that it has become an intensive worldwide area of research (Clark, Kjeldsen, Schorcht, & Tzanakis, 2018). There are many reasons and many ways to introduce a historical dimension in mathematics education (Jankvist, 2009), and even students themselves seem to demand a wider use of it when confronted with historic texts for the first time (Chorlay, 2018, p. 125). In the case of * Antonio M. Oller-Marcén [email protected]
1
Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
2
Centro Universitario de la Defensa de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
A. Arnal-Bailera, A.M. Oller-Marcén
teacher training, the use of history not only promotes cultural understanding, but it is also useful in order to provide a meaning to mathematical objects through experiencing historical moments of their construction (Furinghetti, 2007). Some authors even suggest that “the reading of original sources should become an obligatory part of mathematics teacher education at all levels” (Jahnke et al., 2000, p. 299). However, as is the case with other resources like ICT (information and communication technologies), reading original sources can be a difficult task that must be trained, especially if we want future teachers to be able to integrate this resource in their future practices (Pugalee & Robinson, 1998). This being said, our work is related to an active and fruitful research area both in the contexts of teaching (Chorlay, 2016; de Vittori, 2018; Romero Vallhonesta & Massa Esteve, 2019) and of t
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