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Teacher education through the history of mathematics

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06 Jan 2023

Teacher education through the history of mathematics

In this paper, I consider the problem of designing strategies for teacher education
programs that may promote an aware style of teaching. Among the various elements to be
considered I focus on the need to address prospective teachers’ belief that they must
reproduce the style of mathematics teaching seen in their school days. Towards this aim, I
argue that the prospective teachers need a context allowing them to look at the topics they
will teach in a different manner. This context may be provided by the history of
mathematics. In this paper I shall discuss how history affected the construction of teaching
sequences on algebra during the activities of the ‘laboratory of mathematics education’
carried out in a 2 year education program for prospective teachers. The conditions of the
experiment, notably the fact that our prospective teachers had not had specific preparation
in the history of mathematics, allow us to outline opportunities and caveats of the use of
history in teacher education.

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