Reflections on History of Mathematics
The specialization that mathematics education research has undergone in the past decades has led to a sense of division and disconnection between mathematicians and mathematics education researchers. This chapter deals with the possibilities that the hist
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Reflections on History of Mathematics History of Mathematics and Mathematics Education Luis Radford
Abstract The specialization that mathematics education research has undergone in the past decades has led to a sense of division and disconnection between mathematicians and mathematics education researchers. This chapter deals with the possibilities that the history of mathematics may afford to reduce the divide. Although the recourse to the history of mathematics is an interesting prospect, it unavoidably induces new problems. A range of tensions becomes visible among the involved communities of teachers, historians of mathematics, mathematics education researchers, and mathematicians. Some of these tensions are investigated in this chapter, in particular in the case of a hermeneutic reading of original sources. The tensions that the history of mathematics induces, it is argued, may function as a way to foster a critical reflection and dialogue to contribute to a rich multi-layered understanding of mathematics, its history, and its teaching and learning. Keywords History of mathematics · Hermeneutic approach · Teachers’ beliefs about mathematics · Aesthetic in mathematical thinking · Mathematics and culture · Nature of mathematics
Introduction This chapter presents a reflection on some of the contributions of the history of mathematics to mathematics education. It also explores the manner in which the history of mathematics may serve as a bridge across the intensifying divide between mathematics and mathematics education research. While the first aforementioned point has been a matter of extensive discussion (see, e.g., Barbin et al. 2008), the
With contributions by: Alain Bernard, Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris, France Michael N. Fried, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel Fulvia Furinghetti, Universita di Genova, Genoa, Italy Nathalie Sinclair, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada L. Radford (B) École des sciences de l’éducation, Université Laurentienne, Sudbury, Ontario P3E 2C6, Canada e-mail: [email protected] M.N. Fried, T. Dreyfus (eds.), Mathematics & Mathematics Education: Searching for Common Ground, Advances in Mathematics Education, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-7473-5_7, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
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second point results from the increasing specialization of mathematics education as a research discipline. It is clear indeed that in the early 20th century, research in mathematics education revolved around curricular problems and international cooperation, as the epoch-making articles published in L’Enseignement Mathématique in the first decades of the 20th century make clear (see, e.g., Borel 1914; Bourlet 1910). During the 1970s and 1980s, research in mathematics education moved to new arenas: problems of a psychological nature moved to center stage, with an interest in understanding the students’ thinking, and, more recently, a shift has become clear with the political concerns of today (see, e.g., the Educational Studies in Mathematics Spe
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