[Maths-Education] Being outdated

[Laurinda Brown]

OK. One thing I like to do is what I call 'track back'. One of my votes 
would be for Bateson, indispensable to my way of being/thinking. I 
first read 'Steps to an Ecology of Mind' in 1972 and went on to read 
more or less everything he wrote. One reason that I am comfortable with 
the work of Maturana and Varela is that they themselves were influenced 
by Bateson through the Lindesfarne conferences amongst others. The 
question for me would then be 'what are the influences on Bateson?'.

There's a conversation on the BERA line at the moment about most 
influential reading to which I have not contributed but that seems to 
pose the same question. What I want from the 'quotables' is that sense 
of seeing afresh and I do think that Jo Boaler's PhD had that quality. 
I would expect my students and authors to continue to be referencing 
such work directly - not through a lens of how others have used the 
work. So, I suppose I'm making a distinction here and wonder if we 
could agree on such seminal pieces that would remain influential over 
time? 

I have just taken over editing flm and I have been re-reading back 
issues fascinated by the number of articles in that journal that have 
become oft-quoted. Again, I do not see that they 'date'.

Thanks Anne for an interesting starter for discussion.

Laurinda
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Laurinda Brown
laurinda.brown@bristol.ac.uk