Abstract
The paper discusses the possibility of bringing history in the mathematics classroom by studying historical sources with students. A manuscript by Johann Bernoulli about the differential calculus which was brought to a grade 11 classroom serves as an example. Reading a source is fundamentally a hermeneutic activity and can be conceptualised by the term ‘horizon merging’. In the so-called hermeneutic circle the horizons of the reader and the author of a text are supposed to merge by a repeated reading. In contrast to common ideas about the genetic principle the hermeneutic approach described in the present paper assumes that students have already some experience with and knowledge of the modern counter-part of the concepts treated in the source. Reading a source is an activity of applying mathematics in a way completely new to students. It provides opportunities for reflecting deeply about their images of the respective mathematical concepts.
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Jahnke, H.N. (2014). History in Mathematics Education. A Hermeneutic Approach. 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_6
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