The history of the fourth dimension: A way of engaging pupils in secondary classrooms

Snezana Lawrence (1)

1 Bath Spa University

The National Curriculum in England has, over the past decade, been revised a multitude of times. Disengagement of pupils was one of the reasons for revisions. In September of 2014, a new curriculum in mathematics was introduced, aiming to give greater freedom to teachers and schools to construct a curriculum and teaching episodes that are engaging and appropriate for their students. This paper investigates how such episodes can be constructed through the investigations based on historical development of mathematical concepts and how they could easily link to the new curriculum , offering at the same time greater opportunities for pupils' engagement. The history of the fourth dimension is one such possible topic, and the paper suggests a way of using it in a secondary classroom.

Mots clés: Fourth dimension; engagement; Schläfli; Stringham; Flatland

Domaines: Education; Histoire et perspectives sur les mathématiques [math.HO]

Snezana Lawrence. The history of the fourth dimension: A way of engaging pupils in secondary classrooms. CERME 9 - Ninth Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education, Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Education; ERME, Feb 2015, Prague, Czech Republic. pp.1846-1852. ⟨hal-01288395⟩