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History of mathematics resources for KS3 and
KS4 |
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School: St Edmund’s
Catholic School, Kent |
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Fellow: Snezana Lawrence |
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Email: snezana_l@hotmail.com |
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Website: www.mathsisgoodforyou.com |
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Final Report |
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My initial impetus to train as a teacher
came from my love of the history of mathematics.
I strongly believe that mathematics can be
taught much better than it presently is, if
its teaching is conducted in the context of
its history. The prevailing modern view of
mathematical ability is one entailing creativity
and transcends the more limited concept of
technical ability, but there is very little
widely available material, which, in a simple
and accessible way, introduces the secondary
school age children to the world of ‘creative’
mathematics. |
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My project idea was to develop a base of
knowledge and resources by concentrating particularly
on introducing the historical context into
the study of mathematics at Key Stages 3 (ages
11-13) and 4 (ages 14-16). I planned to have
the full content of the KS3 and KS4 syllabus
linked to the historical context of topics.
I spent much of the initial few months doing
that, although later I realised that it was
not possible for me to complete this amount
of work in such a short period of time. This,
however, eventually lead to the completion
of the structure which allows for additions
and development, which is extremely important
in order to allow for both enlargement and
improvement of the resources. |
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The main difficulties were related to the
work environment. This was not in any way
related to the amount of work I gave myself
to do over the year, but to the technicalities
of actually completing the project and sharing
it with teachers in my school – questions
of updates, access and sharing were the most
problematic ones. Eventually however, this
had a positive outcome. I realised that most
of the resources that I was making needed
to be accessible without restriction in class
and at home and therefore the completion of
the web site rather than completion of resources
became the priority. The project therefore
changed from making the resources to building
the site which contained them, a process which
has yielded excellent results. |
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I have achieved a great deal
over the past year. I managed to construct
a main site and populate it with enough material
for it to become viable for the classroom
and personal study use. The site was made
‘live’ at the end of April and
within a month it has had more than 1600 visitors.
Teachers at my school as well as I now regularly
use the site for either lesson starters, or
for using the site’s on-line resources
and downloading worksheets for those topics
which have been completed. |
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The project attracted considerable attention
both nationally and internationally. Within
the UK I was asked to give presentations on
a number of occasions to the British Society
for the History of Mathematics. As a consequence
of one such presentation, I published a paper
on the project in the Proceedings of the Canadian
Society for the History and Philosophy of
Mathematics. This led to making a contact
with few academics from the US, who are all
very keen to introduce historical context
to teaching of mathematics at secondary level,
and so I hope that this will further develop
into cooperation and possible post-doctoral
research. |
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I have also been approached by a UK publisher,
who is interested to produce a series of handbooks
aimed at teachers and pupils of secondary
schools, linking history of mathematics with
the mathematics syllabus taught in UK. |
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In my country of origin, Yugoslavia (in
fact both in Serbia and Croatia) the project
is attracting attention, and I have been invited
to give talks to their universities and secondary
schools during May/June this year and during
the next academic year. |
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Working on this project has been an extraordinary
experience. It led me to fulfilling an ambition
and a dream. Ambition was to make a bank of
resources with a web site for the teaching
of mathematics in historical context, and
to find out about how other people around
the world are working on similar projects.
I have achieved that and continue to work
on both aspects of it with great pleasure.
My dream when I became a teacher has been
to make mathematics accessible to children
between the ages of 11 and 16 and show them
the human side of mathematics, with the reasons
and personalities behind some of the most
extraordinary inventions of human spirit.
This has also been made possible with the
project because I had the resources, help
and support, as well as a raison d'être
for making this a reality. |
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There were few surprises along the way.
I was very surprised by the amount of interest
some people showed for the project. Children’s
attitude has also been very motivational and
surprising. Even those pupils who I could
not enthuse to do almost any mathematics became
interested once they saw the web site, and
were shown around it. One of the reasons for
this, I believe, has to do with the realisation
of how important they have become in the project
– participating, having their own teacher
develop great amount of material just in order
to teach them, and having things on the web
for everyone to see. |
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Both school and me have gained
an enormous amount both in terms of resources,
motivation and a feeling of achievement which
is shared among the pupils, the school, and
me. My school’s status has been raised
by this project too, as I published papers
and networked with people around UK and US.
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Although I have not completed all that I
originally thought I would, I managed to get
the structure of the web site completed with
some areas that are able to fully support
teaching of topics at KS3 an KS4. Comparable
with other similar projects (Victor Katz and
Karen Dee Michailowicz recently edited and
published a CD-Rom ‘Historical Modules
for the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics’
through the Mathematical Association of America,
founded by the National Science Foundation,
but had about 5 years and about 29 contributors
to hand) I think I have managed to produce
a good quality material in a relatively short
period of time which is ready-to-use in the
classroom. |
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I have made this an open ended project and
hope to be able to fully complete all KS3
and KS4 topics and start working on AS and
A level topics next year. I am convinced that
historical approach leads to better understanding
of mathematical concepts and processes, and
that it raises the achievement and motivation
of pupils across the range of abilities. |
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Attached to this document are
some statistics on the use of the site –
it is encouraging to find out that the site
has been ‘live’ for less than
a month and yet the number of users is steadily
increasing. I plan to further develop not
only the web site and materials for others
to use, but to conduct a research in years
to come to learn more about the benefits of
teaching mathematics in historical context
to attainment levels across the secondary
school age. |
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Usage of the site www.mathsisgoodforyou.com
in May 2005 |
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Referrals page – showing
where the users of the site come from |
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