Our last set of readings for the course -- on the history of math education, for our April 1 class

Hi everyone. Here's our last set of class readings for you to blog about -- these ones about integrating the history of mathematics in math classes:

1) Jankvist: Whys and hows of using history in mathematics education

2) Swetz: Mathematical pedagogy from a historical context

3) Tzanakis & Arcavi: Integrating the history of mathematics in the classroom (from ICMI study)

Our readings for next week's class (Wed. March 25): Technology & embodiment

Hi everyone, and hope you are enjoying our excellent virtual class discussion on the topic of "attention". I am impressed by the high quality and wide range of the discussion!

Here are our three readings for next week's class, on Technology & Embodiment -- two contemporary themes in mathematics education that often come together.

1) Healy & Knigos, Charting microworlds

2) Smith, King & Hoyte, Learning angles through movement with Kinect

3) Ferrara, How multimodality works in mathematical activity




Hope you enjoy these, and looking forward to more good discussion via your blogs and in our class next week!

Our virtual class: On Attention and mathematical abstraction

Two articles by John Mason on attention:

1) Mason 1982

2) Mason 1989

Please read these two thought-provoking articles on mathematics, attention and abstraction.

Then, over the course of our virtual class (from today to our return on March 24), please post at least four substantive posts in the "comments" section of this posting. Make sure to read and consider the whole thread of the conversation to date and respond to what is being said, as well as adding your own ideas. Your four posts should be separated by at least a day each.

Enjoy this interesting conversation!

Lucie De Blois sent these two articles that you might be interested in!

Hi everyone. Lucie De Blois, our guest speaker from the Université Laval, sent these two articles as a follow-up to her talk about the 'false reality' of word problems, Guy Brousseau's important concept of the didactic contract, and ways that geometry can be a way to help students develop arithmetic problem solving skills.

The first article is in English; the second article is in French, but is just 4-5 pages long, so you might want to try out your reading skills in French with this.

Many thanks to Lucie for a fascinating and stimulating talk!

Walter Whiteley sent this link and powerpoint that you might be interested in

Hi all. Walter Whiteley has sent us an interesting link on using 3D printing with Grade 4 kids to design a boat that floats and bears weight, using geometry in the design. (I could certainly imagine doing this with physical materials apart from 3D printing as well...)

Walter also sent a brief 2-slide powerpoint about different kinds of geometric transformations (affine, projective, etc.) that preserve different kinds of invariants.

Many thanks for a wonderful guest talk,  Walter!

Readings/ textual analysis of issues 1, 50 and 100 of FLM for our class with David Pimm March 4

OH NO! I just realized that in (2) and (3) below, the scanner only scanned every second page!!


I will add a link to each of the three issues from the FLM website, so that you can see the missing pages of each article.
Here are the "readings" for next week's class and your blog posts:

1) FLM 1-1 (the first issue of the journal)
(pretty much complete here)

2) FLM 17-2 (counted as the 50th issue of the journal, as I didn't have 16-3!)
plus this link, to see the missing pages!

3) FLM 33-2 (the 100th issue of the journal)
(Sorry, the link on the FLM site does not include the actual articles! The site is not very consistent, unfortunately -- you will have to go with looking at every second page I'm afraid).

[After you have read (1), (2) or (3), everyone should also take a look at:

Bingjie Wang's Masters thesis, pp. 52-64 only
Bingjie presents data here on three Western math education journals (FLM, ESM and JRME) as part of her textual analysis.]

The idea here is to "read" the whole issue as a text, rather than reading every article in depth.

That means, for example:
•reading the table of contents, and thinking about the titles and topics of articles.

What levels of schooling or age groups do they have as their theme (if any at all!)

What kinds of issues are addressed? How are these distinctive?

•looking at the articles themselves:

How long are the articles?

Are they usually illustrated (and if so, how?)

Are there a lot of references cited?

Are there subheadings on the articles? If so, are they the subheadings that you expect, or not?

What language is the article in?

•looking at the issue as a whole:

What is on the front and back cover, and why?

What did you learn from the author identifications?

What about the material on the inside of the front and back covers?

Is there any material between the articles? If so, what is it? What kind of tone might it set?

There's lots more you might look at too. The idea is to get a holistic sense of the journal as an entity, with a history, a community of writers and readers, etc. You might try looking up the name of the journal to see if there's anything interesting written about it elsewhere too.


***Additionally, David Pimm has just sent a number of short (1-2 pg.) pieces from FLM 34(1), which turns out to be the actual 100th issue! 
Sorry that there has been some confusion about this week's readings...
If you are able to take a look at some or all of these very short pieces, which all talk about the nature and history of the journal, it would be some additional good background for our class next Wednesday.

a) Bartonlini-Bussi short piece FLM 34(1)
b) Barwell short editorial FLM 34(1)
c) D'Ambrosio short piece FLM 34(1)
d) Lee short piece FLM 34(1)
e) Pimm & Sinclair short piece FLM 34(1)
f) Sfard short piece FLM 34(1)
g) Sriraman short piece FLM 34(1)

Readings for our Wed. Feb. 25 class on Geometry with guest speaker (online), Walter Whiteley

Next Wednesday Feb. 25, geometer and mathematics educator Dr. Walter Whiteley of York University in Toronto will join us as a guest speaker via Skype from 6:00-7:00 PM!

Here are the three articles Walter would like us to read in preparation for our discussion and his visit:

1) Whiteley, The decline and rise of geometry

2) Whiteley, Why study geometry?

3) Tahta, Is there a geometric imperative?

Walter has so far sent me one question he would definitely like you to address as part of your response:

"Do you feel you know enough geometry to bring it in when it is relevant, to use it as an additional representation for the mathematics you are teaching (and using)?"

He would also be very interested to hear your questions about geometry in relation to other areas of the math curriculum in your teaching, and your ideas and opinions about recent trends to reduce or remove geometry from many school and university math programs.

*Please do invite Walter to be an 'author' on your blog, so that he will be able to take a look at what you've written before he talks with us. His email address is: whiteley@mathstat.yorku.ca