Mathematics Education Atlas


Book Description

The field of mathematics education is the product of many people writing around some (disparate) ideas that have congealed into the semblance of a thing that looks solid, that looks fixed. The field is, however, a foam: a volatile substance made from many bubbles (foci) emerging, popping, merging, and splitting. Following in the genealogical tradition of Michel Foucault, I look back at the emergence of this field called mathematics education research to trace the emergence of foci of study. By looking at those articles published between 1970 and 2019 in the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education (JRME), as well as those published since 2010 in for the learning of mathematics (flm) and Educational Studies in Mathematics (ESM), the results of this citation network analysis show that the foci of the field have not been fixed nor is there consensus around so-called proper foci today. This fluid and dissensual nature of our evolving field gives me hope. What mathematics education research is today is not a natural inevitability, but the product of human action, the collision of incident, orthogonal, and/or opposite forces, and while its trajectory is tied to its origins, it is not tied to it deterministically. The field of mathematics education research, as it has been, limits what we can say is mathematics education research, see as counting as mathematics education research, think as mathematics education, and do in the name of mathematics education research. These limits on what can be seen, said, thought, and done in the name of mathematics education research, what is (non)sensical, constitute a distribution of the sensible. This book serves as an outline and perturbation of those sensible limits.




Atlas for Computing Mathematical Functions


Book Description

This comprehensive reference, which integrates analysis, algorithms and computer implementation, provides more than 150 special functions of the applied sciences with over 700 graphics of functions which can be created using the included CD-ROM.




STEM the Tide


Book Description

Proven strategies for reforming STEM education in America’s schools, colleges, and universities. One study after another shows American students ranking behind their international counterparts in the STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and math. Businesspeople and cultural critics such as Bill Gates warn that this alarming situation puts the United States at a serious disadvantage in the high-tech global marketplace of the twenty-first century, and President Obama places improvement in these areas at the center of his educational reform. What can be done to reverse this poor performance and to unleash America’s wasted talent? David E. Drew has good news—and the tools America needs to keep competitive. Drawing on both academic literature and his own rich experience, Drew identifies proven strategies for reforming America’s schools, colleges, and universities, and his comprehensive review of STEM education in the United States offers a positive blueprint for the future. These research-based strategies include creative and successful methods for building strong programs in science and mathematics education and show how the achievement gap between majority and minority students can be closed. A crucial measure, he argues, is recruiting, educating, supporting, and respecting America’s teachers. Accessible, engaging, and hard hitting, STEM the Tide is a clarion call to policymakers, administrators, educators, and everyone else concerned about students’ participation in the STEM fields and America’s competitive global position.




Atlas of Science Literacy


Book Description

An oversized book with ambitious goals: That's the Atlas of Science Literacy. Asking -- then answering -- such vital questions as: -- What should students learn? -- When should they learn it -- and in what order? -- How does each strand of knowledge connect to other vital threads? This new educational tool from AAAS's Project 2061 graphically depicts connections among the learning goals established in Benchmarks for Science Literacy and Science for All Americans. The Atlas is a collection of 50 linked maps that show exactly how students from kindergarten through 12th grade can expand their understanding and skills toward specific science-literacy goals. But the maps don't just show the sequence of Benchmark ideas that lead to a goal. They also show the connections across different areas of mathematics, technology, and (of course) science -- including gravity, evolution and natural selection, the structure of matter, and the flow of matter and energy in ecosystems. This groundbreaking book is every school's road map to helping children learn science systematically. Using the Atlas of Science Literacy as your guide, trace the prerequisites for learning in each grade, make the connections to support science content, and show the way to the next steps to learning for your students.




Ethics and Mathematics Education


Book Description

This edited volume is an inquiry into the ethics of mathematics education, and to a lesser extent, the ethics of mathematics. The imposition of mathematics for all raises questions of ethics. What are the ethics of teaching school mathematics? What are the costs as well as the benefits? What are the ethical issues raised by the official aims of mathematics teaching, the planned curriculum, the pedagogies employed in school and college mathematics and the assessment systems? These questions are addressed in the book as well as what systems of ethics we might use. The volume ventures into a burgeoning new field. It offers a unique set of investigations, both theoretical and in terms of practices. It announces the ethics of mathematics education as a new subfield of research and includes valuable contributions from many of the best-known researchers in mathematics education; additionally, it is a valuable resource for students, teachers and researchers in the field. This is an enduring and classic source book in the field. From the wisdom of leading scholars to the little heard voices of students, this collection offers the reader many striking new insights into the ethics of mathematics and education.




The Fractalist


Book Description

Here is the remarkable life story of Benoit Mandelbrot, the creator of fractal geometry, and his unparalleled contributions to science mathematics, the financial world, and the arts. Mandelbrot recounts his early years in Warsaw and in Paris, where he was mentored by an eminent mathematician uncle, through his days evading the Nazis in occupied France, to his education at Caltech, Princeton, and MIT, and his illustrious career at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. An outside to mainstream scientific research, he managed to do what others had thought impossible: develop a new geometry that combines revelatory beauty with a radical way of unfolding formerly hidden scientific laws. In the process he was able to use geometry to solve fresh, real-world problems. With exuberance and an eloquent fluency, Benoit Mandelbrot recounts the high points of his fascinating life, offering us a glimpse into the evolution of his extraordinary mind. With full-color inserts and black-and-white photographs throughout.




Researching the History of Mathematics Education


Book Description

This book offers insights into the history of mathematics education, covering both the current state of the art of research and the methodology of the field. History of mathematics education is treated in the book as a part of social history. This book grew out of the presentations delivered at the International Congress on Mathematics Education in Hamburg. Modern development and growing internationalization of mathematics education made it clear that many urgent questions benefit from a historical approach. The chapters present viewpoints from the following countries: Belgium, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Cyprus, Germany, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia,Spain and Sweden. Each chapter represents significant directions of historical studies. The book is a valuable source for every historian of mathematics education and those interested in mathematics education and its development.




Activity and Sign


Book Description

The advancement of a scientific discipline depends not only on the "big heroes" of a discipline, but also on a community’s ability to reflect on what has been done in the past and what should be done in the future. This volume combines perspectives on both. It celebrates the merits of Michael Otte as one of the most important founding fathers of mathematics education by bringing together all the new and fascinating perspectives created through his career as a bridge builder in the field of interdisciplinary research and cooperation. The perspectives elaborated here are for the greatest part motivated by the impressing variety of Otte’s thoughts; however, the idea is not to look back, but to find out where the research agenda might lead us in the future. This volume provides new sources of knowledge based on Michael Otte’s fundamental insight that understanding the problems of mathematics education – how to teach, how to learn, how to communicate, how to do, and how to represent mathematics – depends on means, mainly philosophical and semiotic, that have to be created first of all, and to be reflected from the perspectives of a multitude of diverse disciplines.




Reading for Evidence and Interpreting Visualizations in Mathematics and Science Education


Book Description

CRYSTAL—Alberta was established to research ways to improve students’ understanding and reasoning in science and mathematics. To accomplish this goal, faculty members in Education, Science, and Engineering, as well as school teachers joined forces to produce a resource bank of innovative and tested instructional materials that are transforming teaching in the K-12 classroom. Many of the instructional materials cross traditional disciplinary boundaries and explore contemporary topics such as global climate change and the spread of the West Nile virus. Combined with an emphasis on the use of visualizations, the instructional materials improve students’ engagement with science and mathematics. Participation in the CRYSTAL—Alberta project has changed the way I think about the connection between what I do as a researcher and what I do as a teacher: I have learned how to better translate scientific knowledge into language and activities appropriate for students, thereby transforming my own teaching. I also have learned to make better connections between what students are learning and what is happening in their lives and the world, thereby increasing students’ interest in the subject and enriching their learning experience.




Problem Solving in Mathematics Education


Book Description

ProMath is a small group of didacts of mathematics, who have the common scientific interest on problem solving activities in mathematics education. The 12th meeting of this group, the 12th international ProMath Conference was hold at the Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena, Germany, 10-12 September 2010. This volume contains almost all the papers regarding to the presentations which were given during the meeting.