Relevance of a history-based activity for mathematics learning

Abstract

This paper reports on an experiment involving 108 sixth-grade French students in which the history of Chinese numeration was used in mathematics education. The aim of this study is to evaluate the relevance of using ancient number systems in mathematics education, which is common in French textbooks. In the experiment a pre-test with usual mathematics exercises and an activity with a post-test comprising history-based ones have been proposed. On this data, a factor analysis shows that the tasks based on the history of mathematics combined well with specific mathematical skills. Then, an analysis of the difficulty levels (1PL model) of the regular items and the history-based items helps identifying some key points for which the history of mathematics is relevant.