UoS Maths PGCE EDUC6261; date: Historical and cultural approaches to teaching and learning mathematics

UoS Maths PGCE EDUC6261; date: Task: List as many mathematicians from history as you can in 5 minutes. How is this knowledge culturally defined? This is a team task for groups of three or four. Variations on this task include finding a mathematician for each letter of the alphabet or awarding points for answers that no other team has. Afterwards, we discuss how many of the listed mathematicians are women and how many are non-European as well as looking to see if they named any contemporary mathematicians. We also ask them what they know about the lives of any of these mathematicians to develop understanding of mathematics as a human endeavour. We discuss why this might be.

UoS Maths PGCE EDUC6261; date: Who are they? The women are (from top centre clockwise): Hypatia, Grace Chisolm Young, Mary Somerville, Maria Agnesi and Ada Lovelace. Information on their lives can be found on the websites on the next slides – from where the images came. We talk about the lives of some of these women and why there are historically so few women mathematicians.

Websites: http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/women.htm http://www.bshmeducation.org/ http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/ http://mmdelrosario.hubpages.com/hub/female-mathematicians NRICH – see the topic list TES collection – history of maths