Abstract
Although mathematics is essential to mathematics-education, and mathematics-education is essential to mathematics, these claims do NOT imply that mathematics and mathematics-education are the same. Actually, they are gradually growing apart. This chapter summarizes the views of its authors on the relationship between the mathematics and mathematics-education communities with respect to policy issues believed to be important to both communities.
One argues that the professional object for mathematics teachers should be viewed as the teaching and learning of mathematics rather than mathematics in itself. Knowledge and experiences from mathematics as a discipline is necessary but not sufficient to form sustainable policy. Hence policy should benefit from being informed by mathematics-education research to a larger extend that currently.
Another view states that instructional policy is only as good as its translation to classroom practice. Without appropriate support for teachers to make the significant changes in classroom instruction being asked of them, curricular initiatives are bound to fail. Mathematicians and mathematics educators can and should collaborate to provide support to teachers in implementation of good mathematics teaching.
Yet another claim is that unlike mathematics, mathematics-education is an applied social science, and therefore research in it should be judged to a large extent, by the successful implementation of its outcome.
Last but not least is a view of mathematics and mathematics-education as two quite different areas of study, attributing many of the disputes that have arisen between mathematicians and mathematics educators with regard to what school mathematics should be, to these differences.
In conclusion, it seems necessary for the mathematics-education community and the mathematic community at large, to join forces and formulate a core of common agreements, upon which decision makers can be held accountable. Indeed, a difficult task, however without it there seem to be no hope for progress in the desired commonly agreed goal to improve the outcome of mathematics-education.
With contributions by
Jonas Emanuelsson, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
Davida Fischman, California State University, San Bernardino, USA
Azriel Levy, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
Zalman Usiskin, Emeritus, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
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- 1.
Note that Mogens Niss, in his Chap. 15 in this book, defines policy as something much more practical: decisions and actions, rather than the principles on which these decisions and actions are based.
- 2.
Example taken from The Joint Policy Board for Mathematics (JPBM). http://www.mathaware.org/about.jpbm.html. Accessed 13 June 2013.
- 3.
Note, once again that this is less in accord with Mogens Niss’ definition that appears in Chap. 15 of this book.
- 4.
The three prior publications by NCTM are:
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Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (1989), which outlined what students should learn and how to measure the outcomes.
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Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics (1991), which includes best practices for teaching mathematics.
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Assessment Standards for School Mathematics (1995), which focused on employing accurate assessment methods.
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- 5.
Nevertheless, the reader may note the series of short publications by the Education Committee of the European Mathematical Society (EMS) on solid findings in mathematics education; One article of this series has been published in every Newsletters of the EMS since September 2011.
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Movshovitz-Hadar, N. (2014). Reflections on Policy. In: Fried, M., Dreyfus, T. (eds) Mathematics & Mathematics Education: Searching for Common Ground. Advances in Mathematics Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7473-5_16
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