The Role of History in Enriching Mathematics Teachers’ Training for Primary Education (6–12 Years Old Students)

Abstract

The benefits of incorporating history into mathematics teacher education have received considerable attention and have been discussed for decades. Never theless, the knowledge of epistemic principles for Primary Educators is limited. Curriculum planning involves far more than choosing the content to be taught. Teachers must decide the instructional sequence and the methods to teach the content. Therefore, future teachers should know some roots of the epistemic forma tion of mathematics to have justifications for the relevance of main aspects of mathematics knowledge. Currently, the history of mathematics is introduced in secondary schools. Still, it has been excluded in many curricular explanations in the lowest levels of education, probably because some people think children do not need to be aware of developments in this discipline. In this chapter, we assume that future teachers must know about it to interpret accurately what is written in the curriculum.