Abstract
Abstract Historically studying representations of math-centered classrooms shows us arrangements revealing underlying teaching methodologies, learning theories, and technological innovations. This iconographic study draws on images in textbooks, magazines or collectors' collections from medieval times to the mid-twentieth century. Using an interpretative paradigm, involving historical and documentary research, we look for the perspectives of teaching and learning mathematics.
Highlights
The main thrust of this article is to have a glimpse of how did mathematics classes look in the past? In other words, we will seek to interpret the representations of mathematics classes using images found in textbooks and newspapers and linking them with other studies of past mathematics teaching
We intend to identify the elements shown in pictures of classrooms and the relationships among them and understand change and stability in mathematics classrooms
Our work is based on images that refer to the Portuguese context systematically collected in bibliographic collections, archives and a magazine
Summary
The main thrust of this article is to have a glimpse of how did mathematics classes look in the past? In other words, we will seek to interpret the representations of mathematics classes using images (photographs, engravings, pictures) found in textbooks and newspapers and linking them with other studies of past mathematics teaching. The use of images as historical evidence extends the historian's field of work beyond traditional material sources: official statements, texts published in newspapers, books, documentation in archives, etc. Contesting what he calls visual invisibility, Peter Burke (2001) discusses the ways in which cultural history can incorporate the study of images. We intend to identify the elements shown in pictures of classrooms and the relationships among them and understand change and stability in mathematics classrooms It is a journey through modes of organization of the teaching process, the aula (that we translate here by the word class), and not about the content of that teaching (the curriculum). It will necessarily be a preliminary trip, as a thorough study on the subject has not yet been carried out in Portugal, as opposed to more consistent work carried out in other countries
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