[Maths-Education] Being outdated

[Stephen Hegedus]

How we "present" ideas has changed due to technological advances, e.g.
Modern day "printing presses". In fact, one might say that some ideas were
not presentable years ago. Secondly, old theoretical ideas might be
re-presented due to 21st century innovations. We are presently thinking
through "old" theories of group learning and social cognition here in the
context of connected classrooms. Some theories/ideas might need to be
re-addressed or possibly re-written or at least ideas challenged. But
epistemology does not tend to be linear, or knowledge serially acquired, so
dates themselves tend to get "dated" at times.

sh
-- 
Stephen J. Hegedus,
Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematics,
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
285 Old Westport Road,
North Dartmouth, MA 02747-2300. USA.
Office: (508) 910-6433
Fax: (508) 910-6917
SimCalc: (508) 999-9216
Cell: 508 524 7998
merg.umassd.edu

on 4/30/03 4:03 AM, Anne Watson at
anne.watson@educational-studies.oxford.ac.uk 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 citations from 1999 are criticised for being 'out of date' for no other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,
> University of Oxford
> 15 Norham Gardens
> Oxford OX2 6PY
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> phone:    44-(0)1865-274052
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