Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-8mjnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T07:59:26.782Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

15 - History in a Competence Based Mathematics Education: A Means for the Learning of Differential Equations

Tinne Hoff Kjeldsen
Affiliation:
Roskilde University, Denmark
Victor Katz
Affiliation:
University of the District of Columbia
Constantinos Tzanakis
Affiliation:
University of Crete, Greece
Get access

Summary

Introduction

In a series of papers, Michael N. Fried has discussed a dilemma in historical approaches to mathematics education arising because “mathematics educators are committed to teaching modern mathematics …” and he continues “However, when history is being used to justify, enhance, explain, and encourage distinctly modern subjects and practices, it inevitably becomes what is “anachronical” […] or “Whig” history” [6, p. 395, italics in the original].Whig history refers to the kind of history that is written from the present, i.e., a reading of the past in which one tries to find the present. On account of the mathematics teacher, Fried phrased the dilemma as follows:

if one is a mathematics educator, one must choose: either (1) remain true to one's commitment to modern mathematics and modern techniques and risk being Whiggish, i.e., unhistorical in one's approach, or, at best, trivializing history, or (2) take a genuinely historical approach to the history of mathematics and risk spending time on things irrelevant to the mathematics one has to teach. [6, p. 398].

In Fried [7, p. 203], he emphasizes that this should not be understood as if history has no place or role to play in mathematics education, but was meant to point out “that a dilemma arises when the traditional commitments of mathematics education are assumed.”

The purpose of the present paper is to argue that this dilemma can be resolved by adopting both (1) a competence based view of mathematics education, and (2) a multiple-perspective approach to the history of the practice of mathematics.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Mathematical Association of America
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×