Modelling, Education, and the Epistemic Fallacy

Abstract

National curriculum statements continue to espouse the ability to solve problems arising in everyday life, society, and the workplace as a major goal of mathematics education. But support for such high sounding rhetoric is typically weakened (or absent) when the specifics of curricula are elaborated. The epistemic fallacy relates to the conflating of ontology and epistemology – confusing the nature of an underlying reality with knowledge of it. Here the underlying reality concerns mathematical modelling as real world problem solving. It is argued that manifestations of the fallacy occur in critiques of modelling theory, in debates about the authenticity of models and approaches, and in considering whether issues concerning practice are most fundamentally a curriculum or a pedagogical matter.