3345

Danielle Goodwin and...

philosophy of mathematics education

2018

28

This nationwide survey (n = 4,663) was conducted to explore the relationship between teachers’ images of mathematics and their mathematics history knowledge. Most respondents believed mathematics is connected to the real world, makes a unique contribution to human knowledge, can be done by everyone, and is fun and thoughtprovoking. The median score on the mathematics history test was 37.5%. Mathematics history knowledge scores were related to teachers’ views on mathematics. Teachers with high history scores were more likely to believe that investigating is more important than knowing facts and that mathematics is ongoing and shows cultural differences. On the other hand, teachers with low history scores were more likely to believe that mathematics is a disjointed collection of facts, rules and skills