Mathematics as a formal area of teaching and learning was developed
about 5,000 years ago by the Sumerians. They did this at the same time
as they developed reading and writing. However, the roots of mathematics
go back much more than 5,000 years.
Mathematics as a Discipline
A discipline (a organized, formal field of study) such as
mathematics tends to be defined by the types of problems it
addresses, the methods it uses to address these problems,
and the results it has achieved. One way to organize this
set of information is to divide it into the following three
categories (of course, they overlap each other):
- Mathematics as a human endeavor. For example, consider the math of measurement of time such as years, seasons, months, weeks, days, and so on. Or, consider the measurement of distance, and the different systems of distance measurement that developed throughout the world. Or, think about math in art, dance, and music. There is a rich history of human development of mathematics and mathematical uses in our modern society.
- Mathematics as a discipline. You are familiar with lots of academic disciplines such as archeology, biology, chemistry, economics, history, psychology, sociology, and so on. Mathematics is a broad and deep discipline that is continuing to grow in breadth and depth. Nowadays, a Ph.D. research dissertation in mathematics is typically narrowly focused on definitions, theorems, and proofs related to a single problem in a narrow subfield in mathematics.
- Mathematics as an interdisciplinary language and tool. Like reading and writing, math is an important component of learning and "doing" (using one's knowledge) in each academic discipline. Mathematics is such a useful language and tool that it is considered one of the "basics" in our formal educational system.
To a large extent, students and many of their teachers
tend to define mathematics in terms of what they learn in
math courses, and these courses tend to focus on #3. The
instructional and assessment focus tends to be on basic
skills and on solving relatively simple problems using these
basic skills. As the three-component discussion given above
indicates, this is only part of mathematics.
Even within the third component, it is not clear what should be
emphasized in curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The issue of
basic skills versus higher-order skills is particularly important in
math education. How much of the math education time should be spent in
helping students gain a high level of accuracy and automaticity in basic
computational and procedural skills? How much time should be spent on
higher-order skills such as problem posing, problem representation,
solving complex problems, and transferring math knowledge and skills to
problems in non-math disciplines?
Beauty in Mathematics
Relatively few teachers study enough mathematics so that
they understand and appreciate the breadth, depth, complexity, and beauty
of the discipline. Mathematicians often talk about the beauty of a
particular proof or mathematical result. Do you remember any of your math teachers ever talking about the beauty of mathematics?
G.
H. Hardy was one of the world's leading mathematicians in
the first half of the 20th century. In his book "A Mathematician's
Apology" he elaborates at length on differences between pure and applied
mathematics. He discusses two examples of (beautiful) pure math
problems. These are problems that some middle school and high school
students might well solve, but are quite different than the types of
mathematics addressed in our current curriculum. Both of these
problems were solved more than 2,000 years ago and are representative of
what mathematicians do.
- A rational number is one that can be expressed as a
fraction of two integers. Prove that the square root of 2 is not a
rational number. Note that the square root of 2 arises in a natural
manner as one uses land-surveying and carpentering techniques.
- A prime number is a positive integer greater than 1 whose only positive integer divisors are itself and 1. Prove that there are an infinite number of prime numbers. In recent years, very large prime numbers have emerged as being quite useful in encryption of electronic messages.
Problem Solving
The following diagram can be used to discuss representing
and solving applied math problems at the JSS level. This
diagram is especially useful in discussions of the current JSS mathematics curriculum.
Figure 3
The six steps illustrated are 1) Problem posing; 2)
Mathematical modeling; 3) Using a computational or
algorithmic procedure to solve a computational or
algorithmic math problem; 4) Mathematical "unmodeling"; 5)
Thinking about the results to see if the Clearly-defined
Problem has been solved,; and 6) Thinking about whether the
original Problem Situation has been resolved. Steps 5 and 6
also involve thinking about related problems and problem
situations that one might want to address or that are
created by the process or attempting to solve the original
Clearly-defined Problem or resolve the original Problem
Situation.
Final Remarks
Here are four very important points that emerge from
consideration of the diagram in Figure 3 and earlier material presented
in this section:
- Mathematics is an aid to representing and attempting to resolve problem situations in all disciplines. It is an interdisciplinary tool and language.
- Computers and calculators are exceedingly fast, accurate, and capable at doing Step 3.
- Our current JSS math curriculum spends the majority of its time teaching students to do Step 3 using the mental and physical tools (such as pencil and paper) that have been used for hundreds of year. We can think of this as teaching students to compete with machines, rather than to work with machines.
- Our current mathematics education system at the Pre JSS levels is unbalanced between lower-order knowledge and skills (with way to much emphasis on Step #3 in the diagram) and higher-order knowledge and skills (all of the other steps in the diagram). It is weak in mathematics as a human endeavor and as a discipline of study.
There are three powerful change agents that will eventually facilitate and force major changes in our math education system.
- Brain Science, which is being greatly aided by brain scanning equipment and computer mapping and modeling of brain activities, is adding significantly to our understanding of how the brain learns math and uses its mathematical knowledge and skills.
- Computer and Information Technology is providing powerful aids to many different research areas (such as Brain Science), to the teaching of math (for example, through the use of highly Interactive Intelligent Computer-Assisted Learning, perhaps delivered over the Internet), to the content of math (for example, Computational Mathematics), and to representing and automating the "procedures" part of doing math.
- The steady growth of the totality of mathematical knowledge and its applications to representing and helping to solving problems in all academic disciplines
