A research mathematician’s view on mathematical literacy

Abstract

This chapter provides a personal account of how the views of a pure mathematician on good mathematics education for all students changed through experiences with PISA. Marciniak describes those elements of his own mathematics education that attracted him to mathematics and his own disregard for applications to the real world. His close experience of how students perform on PISA problems have highlighted the difference between significant mathematics and complicated mathematics, and the weakness of educational systems that use a ‘catch the fox’ paradigm designed primarily for the most talented. It is not true that students who can solve advanced problems can necessarily solve problems that appear simple when analysed only from the point of view of the required mathematical tools. Marciniak has changed his view so that he now sees the ability to employ mathematics when necessary to be the crucial aim of mathematics education for all.