Christine - Reflection: Integrating history of mathematics in the classroom

Before reading this article I had a lot of curiosity about Math history for my own interest but I did not assume it was overly relevant for high school students to learn. I believe teaching in context can be helpful and teaching Math in the context of how it is applicable today I think is a very effective way of presenting content. I had not considered that presenting concepts in the context of how they were developed could be another way of giving the information relevance.

I appreciated the perspective of history being a bridge of Math to other subjects. I look forward to learning more about Math in history to understand more of those contexts. I think there's value in showing students that Math wasn't developed in an isolated space but alongside other scientific and cultural questions. I question whether it is possible to integrate a lot of history into the Math classroom when there is so much material to cover. I think teaching Math in the context of how it is relevant today may be a more efficient way to bring relational understanding to the students. I think present-day connections may also be more interesting to many students. I connected with the idea that integrating history into Math education shows students that mistakes are a key part of the learning and discovery process. 

Having read this piece, I am interested in finding ways to incorporate history into my teaching and I can appreciate that it is a good method of putting the knowledge into a more relevant context.