Dutch Mathematicians and Mathematics Education—A Problematic Relationship

Abstract

Mathematics as a compulsory school subject was introduced in the Netherlands in the first decades of the 19th century. While in the beginning there was some involvement of Dutch academic mathematicians, later on their engagement with mathematics teaching was only marginal. That changed in the second half of the 20th century. Hans Freudenthal, professor of mathematics in Utrecht, became deeply involved in mathematics teaching. He became the first director of the IOWO, the Institute for the Development of Mathematics Education, that dominated Dutch mathematics teaching from the 1970s on. In the 1960s, under the influence of New Math, other mathematicians had already played a role in the modernisation of the teaching of mathematics, but from the 1970s on, their role became minimal again. In the first decade of the 21st century the dominance of the ideas of Realistic Mathematics Education elicited protests from mathematics departments at several universities. This criticism induced fierce and often heated debates. At the moment, these discussions have calmed down and it seems that a new understanding between the worlds of school and university mathematics is growing.