History of Mathematics: Building Relationships for Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Dewey (1938) suggested curriculum development should consider both the relationship between students' life experiences and interests and the material to be learned, and the relationship among educative experiences as unfolding in meaningful and useful ways. This study explored the influence of a mathematics education curriculum incorporating historical topics on students' meaning-making efforts as they developed both as students of mathematics and as preservice elementary mathematics teachers. The underlying question of this study was: How may a mathematics education curriculum, infused with evolving historical explorations over several semesters, help students make sense of their own mathematics and their future roles as mathematics teachers in elementary schools? The curriculum provided experiences with historical topics in mathematics, organized over three different semesters, in order to explore Dewey's notion that the unfolding of mathematical ideas may occur as historical origins and contexts offer meaningful mathematical connections. Results suggest that, despite the multiple opportunities throughout their teacher preparation program to expand their ideas about mathematical origins and connections, students maintained a predominantly technical interest in and perspective of mathematics learning. The resiliency of their beliefs was considered from the perspective of context of choice (Kymlicka, 1991, 1995), suggesting real-life experiences and historical connections with mathematical origins throughout a teacher preparation program may not sufficiently equip preservice teachers with necessary tools to overcome traditional perspectives of and past experiences with the mathematics curriculum.