[Maths-Education] Being outdated

[Anne Watson]

I would like to hear people's views about what constitutes datedness in 
research.  I have just been shown a review of someone else's paper in which 
citations from 1999 are criticised for being 'out of date' for no other 
reason than they are 'not recent'.

Do we really believe that, as a field of academic study, we are creating 
new knowledge so rapidly that citations from 1999 are necessarily out of 
date????  What I suspect is happening is that there is pressure to cite the 
most recent person who said something, rather than someone who said the 
same thing a few years before.  Unless the more recent citation is 
research-based and contains something new, rather than something old but in 
a new context, I cannot see why people should not refer to older sources.

On one level, there is little new in our literature anyway, we just re-run 
and re-run ancient arguments about the nature of the individual, society, 
knowledge, truth and so on using different words, different points of view 
perhaps.    In trying to identify what might be genuinely new, rather than 
newly-described, I think work which focuses on certain groups (girls, boys, 
ethnic groups etc.) and what might be common or different about their 
experience is useful, but even that has some central work which is older 
than 1999.

I would be interested to know what pre-1999 references people find central 
to their work and would be annoyed to give up on the whim of a reviewer 
with the chronological sensitivity of a mature goldfish.

My current sensible vote is for Boaler 1997, but I could also suggest 
Dewey, Bruner, Hume, Vico, Aristotle.....

And what is genuinely new?  Let's argue.

Anne W.



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Dr Anne Watson
Tutor for Admissions and Fellow of Linacre College
Lecturer in Mathematics Education,
Department of Educational Studies,
University of Oxford
15 Norham Gardens
Oxford OX2 6PY

phone:	44-(0)1865-274052
fax:		44-(0)1865-274027