Introduction to the Special Issue on the use of History of Mathematics to Enhance Undergraduate Mathematics Instruction

Abstract

This special issue of PRIMUS focuses on undergraduate mathematics teaching and learning using history of mathematics as a vehicle, and comprises eight articles in all. The first four articles describe some aspect of including history of mathematics within coursework required of undergraduate students, and the second four describe the authors’ experiences with developing and using primary source material with undergraduate mathematics students. All eight articles are distributed among the following subset of main themes of the International Study Group on the Relations between the History and Pedagogy of Mathematics (HPM Group).1. Results of actual classroom experiments in the implementation of history in the teaching of mathematics, both from the cognitive and affective points of view, at the undergraduate level, including pre-service mathematics teacher education.2. Results from teaching history of mathematics courses for mathematics, mathematics education, or philosophy majors.3. Ways of integrating original sources in the undergraduate classroom, and their educational effects, preferably with conclusions based on classroom experiments.