(Page 7 of 8) - Schisms, breaks, and islands - seeking bridges over troubled water authored by Toerner, Guenter. and Hoechsmann, Klaus.

stuck their professional perspective even where it does not apply, the latter by refusing to get
involved in "content" even where it is urgently needed. Until this split is repaired, education
administrators can rest assured that there is no need to hurry.

3.3 New Directions

A more positive impact on the educational scene, especially as regards mathematics, comes through
outside initiatives by the private sector (cf.

http://www.mint-ec.de

) and various support programms

offered by foundations (cf.

http://www.nat-working.de

). Implicitly, these programmes contain a

belief in progress through paradigmatic change: research scientists transmitting science in schools,
professional teachers on leave to act as serious participants in university research teams, students in
mixed teams sharing learning experiences with teachers and having direct contact with professional
researchers, and so on. Emotional benefits and social contacts are, of course, part of the plan.

The goal of the most ambitious private sector initiative, known as MINT (M = mathematics, I =

informatics, i.e., computer science, N = natural science, T = technology), is to identify schools
which are particularly innovative and effective in mathematics and science teaching, and to give
them special support and public status. Today almost 100 schools carry the challenging, non-
permanent designation as Centers of Excellence for MINT. In these schools, teachers as well as
students are given special opportunities to develop their mathematical interests; in-service training
courses, for instance, can be organized at a high level. Moreover, the sponsors aim at enhancing the
teachers’ all too often low esteem of their own work by providing generous furnishings and
equipment. There are, after all, not only talented and highly motivated students, but teachers cut of
exactly the same cloth, and any encouragement of them has an immediately multiplied effect on the
whole system.

Unless special efforts are made, these currents could easily by-pass both professional

mathematics and mathematics education, the former because of its innate hermeticism, the latter
because of its redundancy in an environment which addresses teachers and students directly,
without mediation. For mathematics, this would mean putting its practical foot forward: much of
what is actually used in industry is within comfortable reach of even the "purest" abstract
mathematician. Care would have to be taken to show this foot as clearly belonging to a larger body
with many more attractions. Similarly, educators would be called upon to turn toward the "applied"
aspect of their discipline, i.e., pedagogy and communication, and also seize the opportunity to open
windows showing aspects of the social sciences. If the two communities rise to this occasion, it
could be the beginning of building a durable bridge -- around which mathematicology and
educational mathematics might grow as well.

At the moment, even the professional societies -- who began the schisms -- seem to come

around to a new way of thinking. They realize that, all across Germany, the problem is too massive
and too serious to allow small groups any chance of effecting socially significant changes. The
separations of the past are now to be at least partially reversed. Nevertheless, a certain hesitancy and
fear of being reabsorbed is palpable among mathematics educators, while mathematicians seem to
welcome all the pedagogical help they can get, as long as -- noli tangere circulos meos -- they get
enough time to indulge their brains.

References
Atiyah, M.F. (1978). The unity of mathematics. Bull. London Math. Soc. 10, 69 - 76.
Bass, H. (1997). Mathematicians as Educators. Notices of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) 44 (1), 18 - 21.
Berliner, D.C. (2001). Educational Research: The hardest science at all. Educational Researcher 31, 18 - 20.
Courant, R.; Robbins, H. & Stewart, I. (1996). What is Mathematics? An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods.

Corby: Oxford University Press.

Cobb, P. & al. 1991. Analogies from the philosophy and sociology of science for understanding classroom life. Sci.

Educ. 75 (1), 23 - 44.

Cobb, P. & Bauersfeld, H. (1995). Introduction: The Coordination of Psychological and Sociological Perspectives in

Mathematics Education. In P. Cobb; H. Bauersfeld (Eds.), The Emergence of Mathematical Meaning (pp. 1 - 16).
Malusah (NJ): Erlbaum Lawrence.