Abstract
The 1950s in the United Kingdom were marked by social and political reforms, which also led to new conceptions of mathematics teaching and learning. For mathematics, the Association for Teaching Aids in Mathematics, founded in 1952 by Caleb Gattegno and like-minded people, and internationally fostered by the International Commission for the Study and Improvement of Mathematics Teaching, played an important role in this. The 1959 Royaumont Seminar served as a booster for curriculum change in the UK, bringing in influences from the continent as well as from the United States of America. In its wake, several projects with accompanying textbooks and in-service teacher training programs emerged in the early 1960s. Most influential were the School Mathematics Project for secondary education and the Nuffield Mathematics Project for primary education, projects that were also implemented, in part and/or adapted, in some countries outside the UK. From the 1970s onward, criticism of the reform reverberated more loudly and led to the fall of the new mathematics paradigm in the UK.
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Notes
- 1.
As a result of the Robbins report on Higher Education of 1963 (Committee on Higher Education 1963), teacher-training institutions were reformed as Colleges of Education, and “teacher education” became the terminology signifying both a wider range and a greater intellectual status of studies.
- 2.
The Bachelor of Education degree was first established in 1964 after pressure from the professional associations and the teachers’ unions for an all-graduate teaching profession, and the first teachers graduated under this system in 1968.
- 3.
The Labour (socialist) Government elected after World War II (1945–1951) enacted radical Keynesian policies and after a period in opposition returned for a further term (1964–1970). They began the conversion of state secondary schools to the comprehensive system in 1965.
- 4.
The Schools Council for Curriculum and Examinations (1964–1984) was a quasi-autonomous organization funded by the government and set up to encourage and support curriculum development.
- 5.
The Nuffield Foundation was an independent charity with a mission to advance educational opportunity and social well-being by funding research and innovation in education, justice, and welfare.
- 6.
For a detailed account of the history of the Mathematical Association, its teaching reports, social contexts and its dealings with other organizations, see Price (1994).
- 7.
Many comprehensive schools adopted the practice of “streaming” pupils into “able” and “less able” classes using standard arithmetic tests.
- 8.
Statistics at this time consisted of some basic ideas of means, standard deviation and cumulative frequency, and this, together with a separate paper on Arithmetic, was available as an easy alternative to the full Mathematics examinations at age 16.
- 9.
The first government qualifications were established in 1846, initially for training Primary teachers, and training institutions were established as a consequence of the Education Act of 1870. From 1902, teacher training colleges and university departments trained women and men for Primary and Secondary schools. However, it was still possible to find teachers in Secondary schools without any training (Nunn 1951).
- 10.
The National Froebel Foundation began publishing pamphlets on Piaget’s work in 1955.
- 11.
Gattegno was “spiritus mentor” of CIEAEM. See http://www.cieaem.org/?q=node/18 and http://www.icmihistory.unito.it/19371954.php. Lucienne Félix’s (1985) account of the period 1950–1985 can be downloaded.
- 12.
The School Mathematics Study Group (SMSG), founded in 1958, was the largest and best financed of all the National Science Foundation projects of the era, by the combined efforts of the American Mathematical Society, Mathematical Association of America, and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (see also Chap. 2 in this volume).
- 13.
Nathan and Susan Isaacs were some of the first to introduce Piagetian ideas to Primary Teachers in 1955 through the National Froebel Foundation.
- 14.
Significantly, Gattegno (1954a) was the first person in the UK to highlight the importance of mathematical structures in the confrontation of mistakes in classroom mathematics. Also, the importance of these ideas could not reach the majority of Secondary Modern teachers, since they were not members of the MA.
- 15.
Roland Collins was a teacher at Doncaster Training College and the author of Mathematical Pie, a periodical for school pupils.
- 16.
In this paper he suggested the whole of geometry could be taught by this means.
- 17.
More information about the Nuffield Primary Mathematics Project can also be found at http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/nuffield-primary-mathematics-1964
- 18.
At the time this project was set up, there were many “middle schools” in England, for pupils aged 9 to 13—this was a result of the freedom of the LEAs to organize their own provisions of education.
- 19.
Edith Biggs (1911–2002) was appointed Her Majesty’s Inspector in 1950, and until the publication of her report, all documents issued by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate were anonymous. Obituary: Mathematics Teaching, 180, 2002, p. 33.
- 20.
Geoffrey Sillitto, who died in 1966, was a lecturer at Jordanhill College of Education in Glasgow, a key member of ATM and a promoter of the Scottish Mathematics Group (see, e.g., Rogers 2014).
- 21.
The first volume (Book A) was published in June 1968 and Book B in October 1968 with further books of the series planned for publication at six monthly intervals (Breakell 2001).
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Rogers, L. (2023). New Mathematics in the United Kingdom: Projects and Textbooks as Driving Forces of Curriculum Reform. In: De Bock, D. (eds) Modern Mathematics. History of Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11166-2_7
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