Response to "Integrating history of mathematics in the classroom: an analytic survey"

 I am a little embarrassed to say, my pre-reading thinking on the utility and value of the history of mathematics for mathematical education was a little unsophisticated and narrow. Before reading this week’s article, I viewed the role of history in the math classroom mostly as something to contextualize the actual math being learned. I felt that, by sprinkling historical blurbs throughout a semester, students would 


(a) be better able to appreciate the way that many different types of people, not just European and American men, made deep and original contributions to mathematics. I believed that doing this would foster a more inclusive classroom environment, which would make more students feel confident about 

(b) be better able to see math as a human endeavour, by exposing the creativity, passion, debates, mistakes and paradigm shifts that accompany human intellectual and creative activity


I was pleased to see the article touch on the second point, emphasizing that math, rather than being a dry and boring subject, is “motivated by aesthetic criteria, intellectual curiosity, challenge, and pleasure” (Tzanakis et al., 2002, p. 207). Even more intriguing to me, however, was the extensive discussion of implicitly integrating history into mathematical education, by developing lesson plans and units informed and guided by the historical development of a particular topic. 


Think about this: science classes include many, many experiments, where students are encouraged to ‘do science’; the learning value of doing science in-class is indisputable. At least in my case, the first time I was every fully invited to ‘do mathematics’ in an academic context was in graduate school, when I was working on my thesis. The process of doing mathematics is very different from the process of absorbing mathematics that has already been polished and packaged for consumption, and I think that, as suggested in section 7.3.2 of the reading and expanded upon in 7.4. (especially 7.4.6 and 7.4.7), lessons or projects can be constructed which allow for students to simulate the process of creating (or discovering, depending on your philosophical stance) new mathematics. This is almost certainly valuable from the standpoint of understanding and retaining information, but it would also give students a more balanced and broad perspective on what mathematics is like.


After this week’s reading, I definitely have a more nuanced and expansive view of the role that the history of mathematics can play in a math classroom. I am, frankly, excited about the possibility of implementing some of the suggestions made by Tzanakis et al. in my future work as a math educator.




Tzanakis, C. et al. (2002). Integrating history of mathematics in the classroom: an analytic survey. In: Fauvel, J., Van Maanen, J. (eds) History in Mathematics Education. New ICMI Study Series, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-47220-1_7





Comments

  1. Amanda FritzlanOctober 9, 2022 at 4:39 PM

    Thank you for your honesty about your initial thoughts for integrating the history of mathematics. How interesting the the first time you were invited to 'do' mathematics was in grad school!! Your comment is making me reflect on my own mathematics education. Engrossing students in a process of 'doing' mathematics is and exciting prospect. And I wonder how a discussion about what it is to 'do' math with your future students could be facilitated. Discovering and creating are intriguing concepts to teach explicitly in the mathematics classroom.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From the Eye of Horus to Grothendieck Primes: Math and Mythology

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Eye of Horus is a symbol of mythological significance, originating in a story in which the Egyptian gods Set and Horus clashed, and Set damaged or destroyed Horus’ eye. The eye was later restored by another of the gods (according to Wikipedia, most often Thoth, though the Encyclopaedia Britannica says Hathor); as a result, the Eye of Horus took on meanings of health and restoration. In fact, the association with health may have been so strong that the image has been passed down to the modern day: according to some sources, the ¼, 1/64, and 1/32 segments of the eye can still be seen today in the Rx symbol, used to denote a medicine prescription. Numerically, it is interesting to note that the fractions present in the eye represent the first six terms in the infinite series \sum 1/2^n. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that this series sums to 1, given that the Eye of Horus symbolizes wholeness and restoration. This raises the question of w...
Read more

Reflection on Assignment 1

My biggest takeaway from last week’s presentations was the potential value of using historically-inspired geometry problems in a contemporary mathematics classroom. I want to start out this blog post with a quote by the Fields Medal-winning British-Lebanese mathematician Michael Atiyah. Speaking on the topic of contemporary algebra, he claimed that “ Algebra is the offer made by the devil to the mathematician. The devils says ‘I will give you this powerful machine, it will answer any question you like. All you need to do is give me your soul: give up geometry and you will have this marvellous machine.’” While intentionally provocative, I think that Atiyah’s observation contains an important nugget of wisdom: modern algebra, while extremely powerful, is also very abstract and formulaic. I, for example, remember having to memorize the volumes of a number of 3-dimensional shapes, and besides rectangular prisms, these formulas often remained unmotivated and unexplained.  Looking specif...
Read more

What's in a Name: On the Acknowledgement of Non-European Mathematical Traditions in the Classroom

I want to state from the outset of this post that, by necessity, I come to this question from a position of relative blindness. While I can speculate all I want about the benefits of acknowledging non-European mathematicians and mathematics, I have neither the evidence base nor the lived experience that would be required to more strongly ground my musings. What I can speak to, however, is how I have benefitted from the heavy acknowledgement given to European and Western sources of mathematics. To start with, I have never felt culturally out-of-place is a mathematics classroom or venue; while certainly a large portion of this must have to do with the current demographics and culture of mathematics, I was also brought up (as were many if not all of my peers) with the idea that mathematics was mostly the product of white Europeans. Implicit in this view is that me, and people like me, were natural inheritors of our ancestors’ mathematical legacy. At an even more fundamental level, even wh...
Read more