Tímarit um menntarannsóknir - 01.01.2007, Síða 21

19
Tímarit um menntarannsóknir, 4. árgangur 2007
Earth, created by Galileo and Kepler.
ü In 1822, when mathematician Björn
Gunnlaugsson offered to become
mathematics teacher at the country’s
only Latin School at Bessastaðir near
Reykjavík, the official reason for
his appointment and for enhancing
mathematics was to provide the pupils
with the necessary prerequisites
for admission to the University of
Copenhagen, though Gunnlaugsson
also used utilitarian arguments about
harnessing nature and promoted
the cultural aspects of mathematics
education.
ü In 1877, mathematics was no longer
required for admission to the University
of Copenhagen. No mathematician
existed at the Learned School to present
cultural or utilitarian arguments for the
subject, and the mathematics syllabus
was reduced. There were too few pupils
to offer a choice of a mathematics-
science stream vs. a language-history
stream at the school. During a period
of the greatest material progress in
Icelandic history in 1890–1919 there
was no higher mathematics education
within the country, for example to
prepare for engineering studies. Such
education had to be sought abroad,
usually in Copenhagen.
ü When a mathematics stream was
established at the Reykjavík High
School in 1919 on the urging of the
newly established Association of
Chartered Engineers in Iceland and
mathematician Dr. Ólafur Daníelsson,
the official reasons were to ensure
prerequisites for engineering studies,
i.e. utilitarian reasons for a rapidly
industrializing society. Dr. Daníelsson’s
arguments for mathematics education
were, however, mainly cultural,
presenting mathematics as the most
perfect science existing, and concerned
individuals’ training in logic and exact
thinking.
ü In the mid-1960s ‘modern’ mathematics
was implemented as part of a revision
of the Icelandic school system, based
on the influence of an international
mathematics education reform wave,
promoted by the OEEC, later the
OECD. The official arguments were
that education would contribute
substantially to economic and social
progress and the authorities supported
the reform by funding on a previously
unknown scale. The leader of the
activities, Guðmundur Arnlaugsson,
and his collaborator, Björn Bjarnason,
had ideological arguments in mind, that
the new concepts would be conducive
to increased clarity and exactness of
thinking.
A leadership of influential individuals was of
crucial importance at points of transformation
in Iceland. A redefinition of mathematics
education could take place when both the
official body that was to decide upon it and the
persons that were to provide the pedagogical
leadership had developed their own visions.
Their approaches were not always identical but
in all cases they may be classified among the
fundamental reasons identified by M. Niss.
History also reveals that mathematics
education has not always lived up to
expectations. Pupils still ask why mathematics
has to be taught and the answers often neither
suffice to convince pupils, school leaders nor
other school authorities. There are still tensions
between views on whether mathematics is
to be taught at the various stages of the
school system and what should be taught.
However, asking these questions is not unique
to Iceland.
The professional leaders involved shared the
conviction that proper mathematics education
belongs to cultual values in the broadest sense,
as does any other art or science that is truely
pursued. Well educated mathematics teachers
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