On Empirical Research in the Field of Using History in Mathematics Education (Report‪)‬

1. INTRODUCTION A vast amount of literature is available today on the use of history in mathematics education, e.g. in journals such as Educational Studies in Mathematics (ESM), For the Learning of Mathematics (FLM), and Zentralblatt fur Didaktik der Mathematik (ZDM), as well as specially dedicated books on the subject, the most comprehensive one being the 10th ICMI-Study on History in Mathematics Education (Fauvel and van Maanen, 2000). Only a very little part of this literature deals with actual empirical research on the use of history of mathematics in mathematics education (for an exemplification of this see e.g. Jankvist, 2007). The literature does, however, offer a variety of arguments on why and how to use history in mathematics education. However, these arguments often seem to be based on the authors' personal teaching experiences or speculations about possible benefits on the students' behalf, and only seldom are empirical data provided to support the claims made. Gulikers and Blom (2001, p. 223) refer to the publications on history in mathematics education as being 'anecdotic', and state that "it is unclear whether and how the (generally positive) experiences can be transferred to other teachers, classes and types of schools." At the previous Topic Study Group (TSG) meeting on history at the ICME10 conference in Copenhagen a similar statement was made by Siu and Tzanakis (2004, p. 3) who concluded that "it became clear that enough has been said on a 'propagandistic' level, that rhetoric has served its purpose" and hence argue that what is needed now are empirical investigations on the effectiveness of using history. But what is to be understood by 'effectiveness'? Well, if one accepts a distinction between two fundamentally different purposes of using history in mathematics education, then the 'effectiveness' may concern either of these purposes.