Elementary mathematics was part of the
education system in most ancient civilisations, including
Ancient Greece, the
Roman empire,
Vedic society and
ancient Egypt. In most cases, a formal education was only available to
male children with a sufficiently high status, wealth or
caste.
In
Plato's division of the
liberal arts into the
trivium and the
quadrivium, the quadrivium included the mathematical fields of
arithmetic and
geometry. This structure was continued in the structure of
classical education that was developed in medieval Europe. Teaching of geometry was almost universally based on
Euclid's
Elements. Apprentices to trades such as masons, merchants and money-lenders could expect to learn such practical mathematics as was relevant to their profession.
The first mathematics textbooks to be written in English and French were published by
Robert Recorde, beginning with
The Grounde of Artes in 1540.
In the
Renaissance the academic status of mathematics declined, because it was strongly associated with trade and commerce. Although it continued to be taught in European universities, it was seen as subservient to the study of
Natural,
Metaphysical and
Moral Philosophy.
This trend was somewhat reversed in the seventeenth century, with the
University of Aberdeen creating a Mathematics Chair in 1613, followed by the Chair in Geometry being set up in
University of Oxford in 1619 and the
Lucasian Chair of Mathematics being established by the
University of Cambridge in 1662. However, it was uncommon for mathematics to be taught outside of the universities.
Isaac Newton, for example, received no formal mathematics teaching until he joined
Trinity College, Cambridge in 1661.
In the 18th and 19th centuries the
industrial revolution led to an enormous increase in
urban populations. Basic numeracy skills, such as the ability to tell the time, count money and carry out simple
arithmetic, became essential in this new urban lifestyle. Within the new
public education systems, mathematics became a central part of the curriculum from an early age.
By the twentieth century mathematics was part of the core curriculum in all
developed countries.
During the twentieth century mathematics education was established as an independent field of research. Here are some of the main events in this development:
In the 20th century, the cultural impact of the "
electric age" (McLuhan) was also taken up by
educational theory and the teaching of mathematics. While previous approach focused on "working with specialized 'problems' in
arithmetic", the emerging structural approach to knowledge had "small children meditating about
number theory and '
sets'."
[1]
[edit] Objectives
At different times and in different cultures and countries, mathematics education has attempted to achieve a variety of different objectives. These objectives have included:
Methods of teaching mathematics have varied in line with changing objectives.
[edit] Research
An increasing amount of research has been done in the area of mathematics education in the last few decades. Here are a few of the major results.
- Formative assessment[2]
- Formative assessment is both the best and cheapest way to boost student achievement, student engagement and teacher professional satisfaction. Results surpass those of reducing class size or increasing teachers' content knowledge. Only short-term (within and between lessons) and medium-term (within and between units) assessment is effective. Effective assessment is based on clarifying what students should know, creating appropriate activities to obtain the evidence needed, giving good feedback, encouraging students to take control of their learning and letting students be resources for one another.
- Effective instruction[2]
- The two most important criteria for helping students gain conceptual understanding are making connections and intentionally struggling with important ideas. Research in the 70s and 80s concluded that skill efficiency is best attained by rapid pacing, direct traditional teaching and a smooth transition from teacher modeling to error-free practice. More recent research shows that students who learn skills in conceptually-oriented instruction are better able to adapt their skills to new situations.
- Students with difficulties[2]
- Students with genuine difficulties (unrelated to motivation or past instruction) struggle with basic facts, answer impulsively, struggle with mental representations, have poor number sense and have poor short-term memory. Techniques that have been found productive for helping such students include peer-assisted learning, explicit teaching with visual aids, instruction informed by formative assessment and encouraging students to think aloud.
- Homework[2]
- Homework which leads students to practice past lessons or prepare future lessons are more effective than those going over today's lesson. Assignments should be a mix of easy and hard problems and ideally based on the student's learning style. Students must receive feedback. Students with learning disabilities or low motivation may profit from rewards. Shorter homework is better than long homework, and group homework is sometimes effective, though these findings depend on grade level. Homework helps simple skills, but not broader measures of achievement.
- Bilingualism[2]
- Most bilingual adults switch languages when calculating. Such code-switching has no impact on math ability and should not be discouraged.
- Learning statistics[2]
- When studying statistics, children need time to explore, study and share reasoning about centers, shape, spread and variability. The ability to calculate averages does not mean students understand the concept of averages, which students conceptualize in a variety of ways—from a simplistic "typical value" to a deeper idea of "representative value." Learning when to use mean, median and mode is difficult.
- Algebraic reasoning[2]
- It is important for elementary school children to spend a long time learning to express algebraic properties without symbols before learning algebraic notation. When learning symbols, many students believe letters always represent unknowns and struggle with the concept of variable. They prefer arithmetic reasoning to algebraic equations for solving word problems. It takes time to move from arithmetic to algebraic generalizations to describe patterns. Students often have trouble with the minus sign and understand the equals sign to mean "the answer is...."
- What can we learn from research?[2]
- Instead of just looking at whether a particular program works, we must also look at why and under what conditions it works. Teachers can adapt tasks used in studies for their own classrooms. Individual studies are often inconclusive, so it is important to look at a consensus of many studies to draw conclusions. Theory can put practice in a new perspective. For example, research shows that when students invent their own algorithms first, and then learn the standard algorithm, they understand better and make fewer errors. Such findings can have an impact on classroom practice.
[edit] Methodology controversy
In the scholarly literature in mathematics education, relatively few articles report random experiments in which teaching methods were randomly assigned to classes.
[3][4] Randomized experiments have been done to evaluate non-pedagogical programs in schools, such as programs to reduce teenage-pregnancy and to reduce drug use.
[5] Randomized experiments were commonly done in educational psychology in the 1880s at American universities.
[6][7] However, randomized experiments have been relatively rare in education in recent decades. In other disciplines concerned with human subjects, like biomedicine, psychology, and policy evaluation, controlled, randomized experiments remain the preferred method of evaluating treatments.
[8][9] Educational statisticians and some mathematics educators have been working to increase the use of randomized experiments to evaluate teaching methods.
[4]
On the other hand, many scholars in educational schools have argued against increasing the number of randomized experiments, often because of philosophical objections.
[3] Unlike medicine, where volunteers understand the risks, it is often unethical to assign children to experimental methods without their consent. Because certain types of students or teachers may be more willing than others to give such consent, such studies would not be truly randomized.
Whereas randomized studies remain the "gold standard" for testing whether certain educational interventions have an impact or not, observational studies are often needed to explore the sociological and psychologial reasons of how and why various educational factors have an impact. Non-randomized qualitative studies are also useful for discovering new principles or theories, which can eventually be tested by more rigorous methods. The scientific community recognizes that observational studies remain valuable in education—just as observational studies remain valuable in
epidemiology, political science, economics,
sociology,
anthropology, etc.
[10]
In the United States, the
National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) published a report in 2008 based on only studies using randomized experiments; the NMAP report's exclusive reliance on randomized experiments received criticism from some scholars.
[11] In 2010, the
What Works Clearinghouse (essentially the research arm for the
Department of Education) responded to ongoing controversy by extending its research base to include non-experimental studies, including regression-discontinuity designs and certain single-case studies.
[12]
[edit] Standards
Throughout most of history, standards for mathematics education were set locally, by individual schools or teachers, depending on the levels of achievement that were relevant to, realistic for, and considered socially appropriate for their pupils.
In modern times there has been a move towards regional or national standards, usually under the umbrella of a wider standard school curriculum. In
England, for example, standards for mathematics education are set as part of the
National Curriculum for England, while Scotland maintains its own educational system.
Ma (2000) summarised the research of others who found, based on nationwide data, that students with higher scores on standardised math tests had taken more mathematics courses in high school. This led some states to require three years of math instead of two. But because this requirement was often met by taking another lower level math course, the additional courses had a “diluted” effect in raising achievement levels.
[13]
In North America, the
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has published the
Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. In 2006, they released the
Curriculum Focal Points, which recommend the most important mathematical topics for each grade level through grade 8. However, these standards are not nationally enforced in US schools.
[edit] Content and age levels
Different levels of mathematics are taught at different ages and in somewhat different sequences in different countries. Sometimes a class may be taught at an earlier age than typical as a special or "honors" class.
Elementary mathematics in most countries is taught in a similar fashion, though there are differences. In the
United States fractions are typically taught starting from 1st grade, whereas in other countries they are usually taught later, since the metric system does not require young children to be familiar with them. Most countries tend to cover fewer topics in greater depth than in the United States.
[14]
In most of the US, algebra, geometry and analysis (pre-calculus and calculus) are taught as separate courses in different years of high school. Mathematics in most other countries (and in a few US states) is integrated, with topics from all branches of mathematics studied every year. Students in many countries choose an option or pre-defined course of study rather than choosing courses
à la carte as in the United States. Students in science-oriented curricula typically study differential calculus and trigonometry at age 16-17 and integral calculus, complex numbers, analytic geometry, exponential and logarithmic functions, and infinite series in their final year of secondary school.
By Haripriya Vanoo
