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Researching into the History of

Teaching and Learning Mathematics:
the State of the Art
Gert Schubring
Published online: 23 Jan 2007.

To cite this article: Gert Schubring (2006) Researching into the History of Teaching and Learning
Mathematics: the State of the Art, Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of
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 Paedagogica Historica
Vol. 42, Nos. 4&5, August 2006, pp. 665–677

Researching into the History of

Teaching and Learning Mathematics:
the State of the Art1
Gert Schubring
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Relevance of the Field

First of all, we should address the question: Why study the history of mathematics
instruction? Evidently, such research is not undertaken for pure curiosity. Since the
present situation is the product of a historical process, the evolution informs the
mathematics educator regarding political, social and cultural constraints to improving
mathematics instruction. Practically all the research questions in mathematics educa-
tion have a historical dimension that too often, however, remains implicit, or is
treated too superficially. Research can be improved by explicit consciousness for the
history of teaching and learning mathematics. And, what is probably even more
important, the history of mathematics instruction should constitute one of the dimen-
sions of the professional knowledge of mathematics teachers. In order to be able to
handle the problems they encounter in their professional life, mathematics teachers
should know how their profession emerged historically, how it developed and which
types of problems were encountered during this development, and what obstacles had
to be overcome for the effective establishment of mathematics teaching. The history
of their own profession should, hence, constitute part of what has been called the
‘meta-knowledge’ of mathematics teachers and should therefore constitute an
element in the education of mathematics teachers.2 Within the desirable and in some
places realized historical component in this teacher training, there should also be

1
This report was prepared in discussion with the other members of the team for Topic Study
Group 29: Yasuhiro Sekiguchi (Japan), Hélène Gispert (France), Hans Christian Hansen
(Denmark), Herbert Khuzwayo (South Africa).
2
Cf. Arbeitsgruppe Mathematiklehrerbildung, ed. Perspektiven für die Ausbildung der
Mathematiklehrer. Köln: Aulis-Verlag Deubner, 1981; Schubring, Gert. Die Entstehung des
Mathematiklehrerberufs im 19. Jahrhundert: Studien und Materialien zum Prozeß der Professionalisierung
in Preußen (1810 – 1870). Weinheim: Beltz, 1983.

ISSN 0030-9230 (print)/ISSN 1477-674X (online)/06/040665–13

© 2006 Stichting Paedagogica Historica
DOI: 10.1080/00309230600806955
 666 G. Schubring

courses on that specific history. We are of course aware that it is difficult to introduce
additional elements in teacher training programs.

Present State
Despite this systematic importance, one has to admit that this field of investigation
has not yet been developed far as a scientific endeavor. Although a number of relevant
studies were already published during the nineteenth century, the studies relating to
the various countries are rather scattered: they were in general undertaken for certain
occasions, and not pursued systematically. Even in international handbooks on
mathematics education there are no sections on history. Interested scholars are
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working in isolation. In fact, due to the lack of communication there are no shared
standards of research, and methodology is rather weak, many studies relying on
‘hand-drafted’ ad-hoc approaches. However, we can name here four exceptions to the
general situation of absent communication:
1. The Netherlands, where for ten years there has been the Historische Kring
Reken– en Wiskunde Onderwijs (HKRWO), which organizes yearly conferences
on the history of mathematics teaching in the Netherlands, and where there are
consequently a considerable number of ever more systematic investigations;
2. Japan, where there has for four years even been a society for the history of
mathematics instruction that publishes a journal of its own, so that there is a
large number of relevant publications;
3. In April 2004, there was a symposium in Italy on the history of mathematics
teaching in Italy;
4. In May 2004, the first symposium in Portugal was held on the history of mathe-
matics teaching in that country.

Issues of Methodology
The lack of communication is particularly acute on the international level. Almost all
of the studies are dedicated to historical issues within a certain culture or within a
certain state or nation, without ever going beyond the frame and the restraints of that
particular context. And there are very few studies that address comparative issues
regarding the history in different countries or cultures. It is this lack of international
communication that has to be overcome in order to achieve an exchange regarding
general patterns underlying the particular histories, and to establish shared standards
of research. It is thus the primary goal of the team organizing this Topic Study Group
(TSG) to promote and to achieve communication.
The low emphasis on methodology may be caused by what proves to be an illu-
sion: the idea that research into the history of mathematics instruction presents an
easy task, that this history is just a collection of facts which are observable without
difficulties, and that one only needs to ‘collect’ these facts. This is in particular the
view of the history of mathematics instruction as a series of administrative decisions
 Paedagogica Historica 667

that supposedly were transformed into practice. According to this perspective, the
history basically is a history of the curriculum, of the syllabus, managed by centralist
authorities.
Even if the broad spectrum of historical issues is reduced to the syllabuses, the real
problem is whether, and how, centralized decisions were implemented in school
practice, and this opens up again the immense range of dimensions relevant to the
historical development.
In fact, the history of the teaching and learning of mathematics constitutes an
interdisciplinary field of study; the principal disciplines concerned are the history of
mathematics and the history of education, but the science of history contributes as
well. Moreover, sociology is quite essential, in particular sociology of religion.
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Realizing the complexity of our field of study, we might even say that it requires an
even more complex methodology than the history of mathematics. Clearly, mathe-
matics history is a part of cultural, political and social history, too, but the contents
of mathematics and the evolution of its concepts occupy a far more extended domain
within mathematics history than within the history of mathematics instruction.
Compared with this rather dominant role of mathematical ideas and concepts, the
history of teaching and learning mathematics constitutes a social reality that needs
incomparably more social categories to reveal its dimensions.
Even the entity corresponding to the structured set of mathematical concepts,
namely ‘school mathematics’, is far from being just a derivation or a projection of the
‘savoir savant’ as Yves Chevallard pretended3 – well to the contrary, school mathe-
matics develops as a product of numerous interactions, and even pressures, from and
between various sectors of society.
But what complicates the research in our field even more is the fact that mathemat-
ics never appears in educational systems in an independent way but always functions
within structures which are characterized by a compound of several school disci-
plines. This means that mathematics teaching and learning is always dependent on
other factors that it is barely capable of influencing.
Yet, despite this fundamental and structural dependence on a concert of disciplines
that in general exhibit no peaceful coexistence, the perhaps most considerable
deficiency of the large majority of studies in our field is that they treat mathematics
as an isolated teaching subject, without regarding relationships, dependencies and
hierarchies in the system defining school learning.
It should be evident by now that marked progress in research necessitates
methodological reflection and refinement. A decisive resort in doing so is presented
by comparative issues – not only comparative studies of the history of various school
disciplines within a given educational system, but even more importantly comparative
studies on the history of mathematics instruction in different states and different
cultures.

3
Chevallard, Yves. La transposition didactique: du savoir savant au savoir enseigné. Grenoble:
Éditions La Pensée Sauvage, 1985.
 668 G. Schubring

It is quite natural that most research pursued or ongoing is concentrated on the

history within a given nation or a given culture as the history of mathematics teaching
and learning first and foremost constitutes part of the educational history of that
country or culture. But in order not to end up with a collection of separate, isolated
histories without interconnections, one has to establish relations between the
different histories and to reveal what is ‘general’ in them and what constitutes, say,
cultural, or social, or political peculiarities. Practically all questions in our historical
field deserve comparative studies. In a later section, examples from recent research
will be mentioned.
The approaches and results from comparative education hence provide an essential
tool for an international history of teaching and learning mathematics, in order to
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grasp national specificities as well as overall and global trends. Of particular

methodological importance are qualitative methods, which are also applicable to the
study of (historical) documents. Given the primary importance of cultural history,
anthropology provides relevant methodological resources as well.

Some Elements of a Historico-Systematic Analysis

Frame of the Present Study
In view of the extraordinarily broad range of topics within our historical field, the
number of states and cultures throughout history where mathematics was taughtand
the different levels of school systems we had to narrow our focus. The focus chosen
is institutionalized forms of teaching and learning – in types of schools equivalent to
primary and secondary levels. And teacher education is included for these types of
schools, which at least partially belonged and belongs to higher education. The
teaching of mathematics at universities in general has not been included, however,
since it is more tied to the history of mathematics proper and thus provides other
research questions, and needs different methodologies. On the other hand, the
transition from informal to modern institutionalized teaching allows insight into
systematic dimensions and has therefore been considered, too.

Functions and Dependences

Despite the focus on modern times for the studies to be presented in our topic group,
it is necessary to unravel categories permitting systematic analyses to assess what is
already known about the overall development of mathematical instruction.
In fact, institutionalized teaching is almost identical to public instruction organized
by the state. This already shows the structural importance of the state for understand-
ing the history of mathematics instruction. But its role is even more important.
Compared with the several thousand years of teaching mathematics, the few
centuries of institutionalized teaching in modern times constitute a remarkably short
period. And secondary schools present the historically youngest element in the struc-
tures of teaching. The first types of schools since Antiquity can be understood as
 Paedagogica Historica 669

professional schools, training specialists for the different administrative services of the
respective state.4
When first realizations of state-independent forms of liberal education became
practiced, they could be judged as forms of higher education. Later on, there existed
universities on the one hand, and rudimentary schooling of the primary education
type on the other. Genuine secondary schools emerged last, between the sixteenth
and the nineteenth centuries, and typically as forms of public instruction.
The crucial point in all the different moments of the long history of mathematics
education proves to be the rank attributed to mathematics within the respective set of
social and cultural values. And this rank was intimately related to the function exerted
by mathematics instruction.
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One can assert that mathematics enjoyed an unquestioned, firm and central posi-
tion as key discipline in the historically first forms of systematic instruction: in the
scribal schools of Mesopotamian Sumer and of Egypt, together with the second key
discipline of language.
On the other hand, this instruction clearly was oriented professionally towards the
concrete needs of the state, for its highly developed system of administration. The
high rank attributed to mathematics instruction hence derived from this administra-
tive, i.e. professional, function.
In later societies and cultures, where higher social classes became established,
enjoying and using leisure time for learning, there emerged certain forms of liberal (or
general) education. Remarkably enough, apparently the only civilization among these
societies according mathematics a high rank for this function of education was
Ancient Greece, with the well-known high value in Plato’s Academy. Within the
Roman civilization, however, rhetoric was the leading discipline.
In the other states and cultures, even in the other Axial Age Civilizations (a key
term in sociology for investigating the first monotheist religions as breakthroughs in
civilization), mathematics was only accorded a minor propaedeutic function.5
In fact, it is well known that, in Ancient China, mathematics belonged to the
knowledge necessary in the branches of state administration, and that it constituted
therefore one of the examination subjects for entering the civil service. On the other
hand, it is likewise known that Confucianism, the Chinese ‘official’ philosophy, did
not value mathematics.
And within the Hindu civilization in India, mathematics was only ranked to exert
a propaedeutic function, as auxiliary knowledge for the religiously valued astronomy.

4
Cf. Høyrup, Jens. “Influences of institutionalized mathematics teaching on the development
and organization of mathematical thought in the pre-modern period. Investigations in an aspect of
the anthropology of mathematics.” Studien zum Zusammenhang von Wissenschaft und Bildung.
Materialien und Studien des Instituts für Didaktik der Mathematik der Universität Bielefeld 20 (1980):
1–137.
5
Cf. Eisenstadt S. N., ed. The Origins and Diversity of Aaxial Aage Civilizations. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1986. I am grateful to Erika Hültenschmidt who drew my attention
to this sociological theory.
 670 G. Schubring

We can therefore not only state two conflicting functions of mathematics instruction
throughout history, a professional function and a propaedeutic function, where the
latter might evolve to the higher form of liberal or general education of the mind. But,
moreover, it now becomes clear also why sociology of religion is relevant to the history
of mathematics instruction.
Evidently, the role exerted by knowledge in society is one of the favorite subjects of
sociology. One has to be aware, however, that in all civilizations the state functioned
in tight union with some official religion (at least until the historically late processes
of secularization and the separation between state and church). Within this classical
coalition, it was the task of religion to define and to regulate the social appreciation
of knowledge, in particular the hierarchy of the different fields, or disciplines, of
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knowledge.
It is remarkable how many of the official state religions in history, even of the Axial
Age Civilizations, did not fully accept mathematics, and attributed it a minor rank in
their hierarchy of knowledge. While it was legitimized for some religions, or for
religiously welcome professional goals, it was subordinated in the conceptions of
knowledge and hence in the forms of liberal education, too.
To mention some examples, besides the cases of China and India:
● Within the Islamic civilization, some applied arithmetic was legitimized by the
problems of inheritance as emphasized by the qoran, but mathematics was either in
a marginal or endangered position, as ‘foreign’ or ‘ancient’ science, or as an
auxiliary propaedeutic subject for the madrasa, which were maintained for religious
ends.6
● Within the likewise religiously organized universities of the Christian West,
elementary astronomical knowledge was welcome as ‘computus’, for calculating
the Christian calendar, but the famous ‘Quadrivium’ meant elementary subjects of
secondary relevance.7
● Kastanis’s contribution shows instructively how strongly the Orthodox Christian
Church opposed a modernization of learning and a higher rank for mathematics
instruction at the end of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century.
It is revealing that the first movement in favor of according mathematics a high rank
as knowledge and as a teaching subject in Europe originated outside the teaching
systems, and that means external to church and religion, and likewise independent of
a state and its goals: it was the movement of Humanism during the Renaissance in
Europe, which claimed to revive the knowledge values of Ancient Greece.
And it is likewise revealing that the teaching systems did not implement such
reforms by themselves – as evidenced so many times later! – but that pressure from
outside was necessary to achieve reform. Actually, it was now the state that, in the
course of the process of emerging national states, began to change character, assuming

6
Cf. the contribution by Abdeljaouad in this volume.
7
Cf. Schöner, Christoph. Mathematik und Astronomie an der Universität Ingolstadt im 15. und 16.
Jahrhundert. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1994.
 Paedagogica Historica 671

some functions for interior policy hitherto exerted by the Church, making the sover-
eign decree the establishment of teaching disciplines as proclaimed by Humanism,
against the resistance of the traditional corporations.8
Again, after Christianity in Western Europe split into Protestant and Catholic
faiths and Churches, one can observe the relevance of sociology of religion, and in
particular of Max Weber’s claim of a Protestant Ethic and of the Merton thesis: it was
the Protestant states that maintained and pursued the Humanist reforms of learning
and accorded mathematics a firm position as an increasingly independent discipline,
whereas the Jesuit teaching system in the countries of Counter-Reformation
essentially re-established a minor, even marginal status for mathematics. In fact,
according to the Jesuit interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy, mathematics made no
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assertions about things themselves, but only about some accidental properties, so that
mathematics was not the instance for them to assure the necessary ‘certitudo’ of
knowledge.9
One of the roots of the modern public system of schooling, together with its notion
of liberal education elevating mathematics to the rank of one of the major disciplines,
thus originates in this secularization of education brought about by the Protestant
Ethic.
The other root extends from the major strand of modern philosophy, from
Rationalism in France, developed by Descartes with the purpose of establishing the
certainty of mathematics against the complex of Jesuit interpretation of Aristotelian
ideas mentioned above. Rationalism was continued in the nineteenth century by
Positivism, which accorded mathematics the leading position among the sciences.

A Synthesis of Recent Research

The processes of modernization and of transmission are intimately related. It is
clearly observable in history that there was no universal and uniform growth of math-
ematics and mathematics instruction on the various continents. Rather, there were a
few centers of development from which knowledge was transmitted to other regions/
other cultures and the centers that were strong in a given period did not remain stable,
their strength being in vigor only during limited periods, whereafter other centers
emerged, in general by transmission from one of the hitherto dominant centers.
There are numerous spectacular cases of emergence of mathematics in a hitherto
‘underdeveloped’ country or culture by transmission:
● the transmission of Greek and Hellenistic mathematics to the culture of the Arabs;
● translation of Euclid’s textbook into Chinese by Jesuits at the Chinese court, and
their adaptation of European astronomy to Chinese calendar-making;

8
Cf. ibid.
9
Cf. Krayer, Albert. Mathematik im Studienplan der Jesuiten: die Vorlesung von Otto Cattenius an
der Universität Mainz (1610/11). Stuttgart: Steiner, 1991.
 672 G. Schubring

● the Meiji Revolution in Japan in the 1860s. The Empire of the Rising Sun had been
closed entirely against influences from abroad. After opening had been forced,
Western European culture and science were introduced;
Less spectacular or less well-known cases are:

● Brazil, a Portuguese colony until 1808, was intentionally held in a state of under-
development by the Portuguese government. When the Court shifted the centre of
Portuguese government to Brazil in 1808, it introduced a decisive modernization,
in particular by transmitting French science and mathematics to the educational
system now established.
● Another case is Greece, which has been presented here by Kastanis and Kastanis.
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While at the end of the eighteenth century, during the Ottoman dominance, tradi-
tional German mathematics and also some French mathematics was brought home
by Greeks having studied in these countries, an enormous movement of transmis-
sion began after 1821, and following independence. For the system of public
instruction now rapidly being established, modern mathematics textbooks – now
mainly from France and to a lesser extent from Germany – were translated, and
used as textbooks in schools and universities.
● Yet another case has been presented by Alexander Karp for Russia: given the state
of general underdevelopment, the energetic introduction of an educational system
by Tsar Peter the Great meant a decisive modernization of the country. For a long
time, its evolution relied on the transmission of foreign science, and it took a long
time until significant national production in science began.
● A revealing case is presented by the USA: since colonization by British settlers,
there was for almost two centuries no serious mathematics instruction. A change
came about early in the nineteenth century, with the founding of the military
Academy at West Point and the importing of French textbooks. Thereafter, the
national production of adapted textbooks began and permitted reasonable, yet not
particularly noteworthy mathematical instruction. A new change came about in the
last third of the nineteenth century, due to the university level – when the first
universities began to create graduate studies and to call professors from abroad for
these – for mathematics, predominantly professors from Germany. This rise was
complemented by a great number of students going to Europe to study at the
sources of modern science – for mathematics again mainly in Germany.

It was this direct transmission at the tertiary level that also raised the quality of math-
ematics in secondary schools, and established a reasonable level of national research
in mathematics. The real ‘take-off’ of mathematics in the USA, which shifted the
centre from Germany to the USA, was due, however, to the later exodus of mathe-
maticians who fled the dictatorships and persecutions by Fascist regimes in Europe.
Reviewing this continuing process of spreading mathematical culture from one
country or region, from an erstwhile ‘metropolis’ to another country at the periphery,
which might later become a new metropolis of learning, the question is what is
primary for establishing a mathematical culture in a country hitherto not ‘affected’:
 Paedagogica Historica 673

whether it happens by research, through some more or less isolated specialists or

practitioners, or whether it happens by teaching, and by disseminating textbooks.
It seems a bit difficult to answer this question, but the cases just described hint at
the primary importance of teaching, of instruction for establishing a mathematical
culture, which then becomes supportive of research.10
Reflecting on the notion of transmission, it can be noted that the knowledge trans-
mitted in general does not remain unchanged upon being integrated into the new
context of another culture. Rather, it is adapted to the specific traditions and values
of the new context. That transmitted ideas are changed on reception into another
cultural context is well known in the humanities, but it also applies to mathematics
and mathematics education. A characteristic example was shown in Yamamoto’s
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contribution: The insistence of the German Treutlein on abolishing the strict

separation between plane geometry and solid geometry was eventually reduced in the
Japanese reception to a methodological reform in dealing with solid geometry.
With regard to the second notion within this first dimension of ongoing research,
i.e. modernization, one must be aware that it concerns changes within a given educa-
tional system: while transmission induces changes adopted from foreign systems,
modernization occurs within a system already in function.
Even then, a scrutiny of primary schools and secondary schools as a subsystem of
the entire educational system of a country seems to reveal that these school systems
never produced reforms from within, but rather showed considerable inertia, tending
more toward conservatism than to modernization. Impulses for modernization either
came from the tertiary level of education, or from applied professions, or from some
enlightened, far-sighted personalities exerting leadership by charisma.
A good example of this inertia is the German school system during the second half
of the nineteenth century. Although it was quite evident that the traditional
mathematics curriculum with its dominance of Euclidean geometry was no longer
appropriate for the industrially and technologically advanced country, no initiatives
in favor of modernization came from the mathematics teachers, not even from the
teachers in the realist secondary schools, or from the association of mathematics and
science teachers founded in 1891. In this case, the impulse for change was given by
an enlightened personality in the tertiary system: the university professor Felix Klein.
In reality, modernization cannot only happen within the same state but can also be
brought about by transmission from foreign instances.
In fact, mathematics apparently constitutes the only school discipline to experience
two prolonged movements of modernization based on international transmission of
reform concepts: the movement of the years after 1908, and the ‘modern mathematics’
movement.

10
See Schubring, Gert. “Production Mathématique, Enseignement et Communication.
Remarques sur la note de Bruno Belhoste, ‘Pour une réévaluation du rôle de l’enseignement dans
l’histoire des mathématiques’ parue dans la RHM 4 (1998): 289–304.” Revue d’histoire des
mathématiques 7 (2001): 295–305.
 674 G. Schubring

The first movement of reforms was launched in 1908 by the International Commis-
sion on Mathematics Instruction (IMUK/CIEM). Felix Klein, the first president of
IMUK, had understood that the school curricula for mathematics needed to be
profoundly modernized. Following his advice, the main reform agenda became to
introduce the concept of ‘functional thinking’ as a basic notion pervading the entire
mathematical curriculum. This main agenda should have as its main impacts:
● the use of graphical elements in the teaching of geometry;
● reconciling rigor and intuition;
● the fusion of hitherto separated branches of school mathematics, such as plane and
solid geometry;
● the introduction of the basic notions of differential and integral calculus.
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Evidently, the reception of these reform ideas did not occur uniformly in the various
countries, but they adapted them to their own cultural and social traditions. In
general, one can state, however, that in a considerable number of countries definitive
effects of modernization of curricula and teaching were achieved. For instance, as a
direct effect, the first all-Russian mathematics teacher congresses discussed reform
agendas for Russia based on the ICMI agenda (see the contribution by Alexander
Karp).
There were even direct effects when the movement reached the periphery with some
delay: a telling case is that of Brazil with its reforms of 1929–1932, in the genuine spirit
of Felix Klein.11
The modern mathematics movement was launched after the Sputnik shock of
1957. This international movement, much broader than the first, clearly also
originated from outside, from the OECD – hence from an economic and social drive
to develop the industrialized countries in the West in competition with the socialist
system. There are numerous studies of this movement and also international
evaluations; the definitive historical study has not yet been done. But Bjarnadóttir’s
contribution, in particular, shows that this movement – despite all its shortcomings,
and despite its short duration – had a lasting effect:
● It set off an enormous dynamic of reform together with a remarkably broad partic-
ipation of teachers.
● It resulted in a lasting modernization of the curricula for secondary schools.
● It abolished the separation of the primary schools, and integrated them into a
consequent curriculum aimed at developing mathematical competence for all.
● It affected not only the industrialized countries of the West, as originally intended
but a large number of underdeveloped countries, as well.

11
Pitombeira de Carvalho, João Bosco, et al. “Uma coleção revolucionária.” História e Educação
Matemática 2, no. 2 (2002): 9–107, and id. “Euclides Roxo e as polêmicas sobre a modernização
do ensino da matemática.” In Euclides Roxo e a modernização do ensino de matemática no Brasil, edited
by Wagner Rodrigues Valente. São Paulo: Sociedade Brasileira de Educação Matemática, 2003:
86–158.
 Paedagogica Historica 675

● It thus had, besides a democratizing effect within the countries concerned, at the
same time a globalizing effect.

The second dimension of current research concerns teaching practice and textbooks,
and, in particular, teacher education. Evidently, all mathematical instruction depends
on the teacher, and therefore the first object of all historical research is the mathemat-
ics teachers. It is of particular interest for the period when mathematics instruction
was first institutionalized in a country to reveal who the first teachers were, how they
had become qualified in mathematics, how had they been selected or hired for this
profession, and how they were trained for their teaching profession.
And for the periods subsequent to this institutionalization it is of systematic
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importance to know how mathematics teacher education for the existing school types
was organized, and to which types of institutions it was attached. These topics
essentially belong to the educational history of the respective country, and may reveal
how mathematics teacher education related to mathematics, already established as a
scientific discipline, and what value was attributed to mathematics as a school
discipline in the period under investigation.
The point, hence, is to show whether a profession of mathematics teachers emerged
in the given country, or whether mathematics instruction remained too marginal in
the school system to permit a separate discipline to become established among the
general teachers’ profession. A further issue is whether possibly different strata
existed within a profession of mathematics teachers, say, according to diverse school
types, imposing different views or epistemologies of mathematics in their instruction.
Establishing such patterns, features and characteristics for the respective countries
would provide a basis for comparing the structures in different countries, and for
distinguishing between general or common patterns and particular ones.
Another task to be tackled after these first tasks have been solved would be to
establish a prosopography of the mathematics teachers in that country, at least for the
first periods of institutionalization of mathematics instruction. ‘Prosopography’ is a
traditional method in history as a science to establish collective biographical data on
specific groups, and thus to reveal common structures in that group – say with regard
to social origin, formation, professional orientations and shared beliefs.
A further task would be to study the professional life of these mathematics teachers,
to unravel typical conflicts – say with colleagues of other disciplines, with the head-
master, with the administration, with pupils and their parents – thus gaining access
to the historical reality, the everyday life of teaching.
Unfortunately, despite the systematic importance of these issues, one has to state
here one of the greatest deficits in research. There are only very few relevant studies.
Maybe the gaps are due to the fact that the first issue, how the mathematics teacher
emerged as a figure proper, in general requires extensive archival research, and thus
can be realized only by persons devoted to such research and methodologically qual-
ified to carry it out. And the second issue, the history of institutionalized mathematics
teacher training, requires it to be situated within the respective history of education,
and the history of mathematics, and makes for a quite complex research task, too.
 676 G. Schubring

Among the few studies one might mention, besides the research presented here by
Eileen Donoghue and some research in Brazil12 – both focusing on teacher education
in normal schools for primary schools and in universities for secondary, but mainly
only for more recent periods in the early twentieth century – studies on the
emergence of the profession of mathematics teachers in nineteenth-century Prussia,
as part of the fundamental social and educational reforms realized there.13 These
studies reveal three successive generations of mathematics teachers as contributing to
that emergence:
● Since most of the Gymnasia existing at the time of reform already had some
mathematics instruction, there were teachers who taught mathematics besides
other subjects as well. Some of these encyclopedically trained teachers continued
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to teach mathematics.
● The second generation consisted of self-educated enthusiasts of mathematics who
were hired to meet the new high demand for mathematics teachers. Since they
lacked systematic training, they were in general not helpful for implementing
mathematics as a major new discipline in schools.
● Only the third-generation teachers trained at the likewise reformed universities
were able to realize the neo-humanist vision of mathematics as an integral part of
knowledge.14
In the same vein, one should mention studies by Harm Smid, who has undertaken
largely analogous studies for the Netherlands for the first half of the nineteenth
century.15
In contrast to teacher education, textbooks constitute a preferred and well-studied
historical issue in many countries. These numerous studies have already presented a
considerable amount of knowledge on historical development. This knowledge
should be integrated in order to establish what constituted ‘school mathematics’
during a given period for a given country: as a hierarchical unfolding of mathematical
contents, and tied to certain teaching methods and epistemological views.
One must be aware that the analysis of historical textbooks also presents method-
ological challenges: a purely internal analysis of just one textbook will not yield
significant results; it requires comparison – but with what? In general, there is no
other canonical textbook that can be used as a standard, as a measuring unity.
Rather, one needs several textbooks in order to better grasp the spirit of a certain
period. And in the case where several editions of a school textbook exist with changes
in the presentation, an internal analysis will again not be sufficient, as the changes

12
See Silva da Silva Dynnikov, Circe M. “A preparação pedagógica dos professores de Matemáti-
ca da Faculdade de Filosofia Ciências e Letras-FFCL da USP.” Cadernos de Pesquisa em Educação
PPGE/UFES (Vitória/ES) 8, no. 15 (2002): 8–37.
13
Schubring, Die Entstehung des Mathematiklehrerberufs, 1983.
14
Ibid.
15
Smid, Harm J. Een onbekookte nieuwigheid?: Invoering, omvang, inhoud en betekenis van het
wiskundeonderwijs op de Franse en Latijnse scholen 1815–1863. Delft: Delft University Press, 1997.
 Paedagogica Historica 677

need not be the result of cognitive progress of the author, but may (also) be due to
social pressure on mathematics teaching.16
For the last major issue in this second dimension, teaching practice, there are also
a considerable number of historical studies. If not regarded in an isolated manner,
they already provide links to the cultural, social and political factors, since the meth-
ods much favored at a certain time in a given country – say laboratory method, child
orientation, problem orientation, etc. – might be strictly rejected in a later period in
the same country, or simultaneously in another country. A hint at these diversities
became visible already in the discussion of the TSG’s second day, when practice-
oriented methods according to John Dewey’s pragmatism, in complete agreement
with the educational values in the USA, were shown to be suspect of impeding
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generalization of concepts, in different social and cultural contexts, in the perspective

of mathematics for all.
Regarding the last dimension, the cultural, social and political functions of mathe-
matics instruction, the diversity of realizations of mathematics instruction seems to
reach a peak, but, on the other hand, the applicability of comparative methods for
unraveling comparisons and common patterns has in principle been achievable in the
best manner since functioning of traditional societies is investigated by anthropology,
and modernization processes and social conflicts brought about by them by sociology.
In the preceding articles in this issue, a number of points relevant for this dimension
have already been made. And in the existing studies on national history of mathemat-
ics instruction, one can often find a wealth of information on this dimension. This
information quite often needs to be ‘excavated’, to be made explicit, and to be placed
in relation to the general educational and political history of the country concerned.
Livia Giacardi’s contribution is an excellent example, which makes the relations
between the different actors and instances clearly explicit – those between mathema-
ticians, mathematics teachers, cultural traditions and their influence on school
structure, and political movements and decision. The extraordinary feature of the
Italian case is the split within the mathematical community.
Evidently, ‘excavating’ in this way the ‘nuggets’ from existing publications
establishing relations to cultural, social and political history, and if necessary,
complementing this by archival research, needs devoted specialists. And achieving
international comparisons requires international cooperation.

Perspectives for Future Research

As regards future work we are confident that this Symposium will have enhanced
international cooperation, so that continuing communication and cooperation will
proceed to further substantial results. As a first step, we are establishing an interna-
tional network, based on a website.

16
Cf. Schubring, Gert. “On the methodology of analysing historical textbooks: Lacroix as text-
book author.” For the Learning of Mathematics 7 (1987): 41–51, and id. Análise Histórica de Livros de
Matemática. Notas de Aula. Campinas: Editora Autores Associados, 2003.