[Maths-Education] Being outdated

[Judy Mousley]

People are going overboard with this lately. I agree with the points 
you make, Anne. I would much prefer to see acknowledgement and use of 
original ideas (including those of the authors you mention) rather 
than re-packaged ideas.
Quality ideas develop, but do not date -- and having a date that 
starts with a 2 is no indication of quality. Authors should show an 
awareness of seminal papers, relevant research, and key developments, 
no matter what the date on the publications that enable them to do 
that.
At the moment I am handling reviews of papers submitted for the MERGA 
conference, and am learning a lot from skim reading them. It is quite 
annoying to see a comment like "You should have referred to articles 
by xxx, 2000, and xxx and YYY, 2002" -- especially if I know those 
recent articles and think that the authors have not made a useful 
contribution to the topic of the paper.
There are quite a few older works that I refer to regularly. Some of 
these useful authors (such as Skemp and vonGlaserfeld) had the 
decency to acknowledge their own sources.
Judy


>***********************************************************************************************************
>This message has been generated through the Mathematics Education 
>email discussion list.
>Hitting the REPLY key sends a message to all list members.
>***********************************************************************************************************
>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necessarily out of date????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.
>
>
>
>*****************************************************************
>
>
>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
>
>
>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>An international directory of mathematics educators is available on 
>the web at www.nottingham.ac.uk/csme/directory/main.html
>______________________________________________
>Maths-Education mailing list
>Maths-Education@nottingham.ac.uk
>http://lists.nottingham.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/maths-education