مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - History of mathematics in secondary school textbooks: an ecological analysis

Abstract :

The use of history of mathematics for teaching mathematics has gained importance in recent years. Historical items have been introduced in mathematics textbooks in many countries. The aim of this introduction is to increase students’ motivation in mathematics courses, to show them how mathematics are used in daily life situations and to provide them opportunities to study the emergence and the development of mathematics. The purpose of this study was to analyse in what measure and how history of mathematics was used in Turkish secondary school mathematics textbooks. The study was conducted with content analysis method. The historical items were first identified and classified, and their contents were analysed using ecological analysis model, which is a specific content analysis approach. This model, which claims that an ecologically viable system should be hierarchical and coherent with regard to its components, was used in the present study to analyse the coherent of the historical items with the content of the textbooks. All the middle school textbooks approved by Ministry of Education to be used for 2013-2014 academic year were analysed in the study. At the end of the study, it was observed that the number of historical items used in the textbooks was low. The qualitative data analysis showed that most of identified items aim to motivate student for learning mathematics and only a few items aim to provide a deeper understanding or analytical thinking. Moreover, the ecological analysis showed that some items were problematic from ecological point of view