An investigation of the use of the history of mathematics in mathematics education from different perspectives

The purpose of the study is to investigate the reflections of the history of mathematics from the perspectives of the middle school students (6th-8th grade), mathematics teachers, mathematics/mathematics education faculty members, mathematics curriculum and textbooks. Employing convergent parallel mixed design, the study conducted with totally 2009 students, 27 teachers and 7 faculty members. In addition, 2013 middle school (5th-8th grades) mathematics curriculum and six textbooks approved by Ministry of National Education during the 2015-2016 academic year were the written-sources of the study. The quantitative data were collected via the Student Survey on the History of Mathematics; the quantitative data were gathered through the semi-structured interview schedules for teachers and faculty members; the curriculum and the textbook analysis frameworks. The quantitative data were analyzed by descriptive statistics methods; the qualitative data were analyzed by the descriptive and content analysis. The findings indicated that the students' views about the use of the history of mathematics in the teaching-learning process were generally positive, but as the class level increased, the students' positive opinions decreased. Furthermore, both the teachers and the faculty members thought that history of mathematics can provide some contributions to students and teachers and there are some factors that affects the use of history of mathematics in mathematics education. They made some suggestions about teachers, curriculum and textbooks. The findings indicated that two references addressing the history of mathematics were found in the curriculum; only twenty-one references, mostly presented in the form of simple historical/biographical information, were found in the textbooks.