[Maths-Education] Being outdated

[Alison Price]

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Surely what is out of date is not to do with date but to do with relevance and whether it has been superseded by subsequent
research which discredits it or not.  And in some contexts there is a historical perspective which requires reference to past
work even if it is no longer applicable to current practice.
In early years maths I think my vote would be for Martin Hughes (1986!) Gelman and Galistel (1978), in addition to Anne's list,
though of course I would look for more recent references as well.
Alison


Anne Watson wrote:

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> 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 citations from 1999 are criticised for being 'out of date' for no other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,
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