Coding as a Trojan Horse for Mathematics Education Reform

The history of mathematics educational reform is replete with innovations taken up enthusiastically by early adopters without significant transfer to other classrooms. This paper explores the coupling of coding and mathematics education to create the possibility that coding may serve as a Trojan Hor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe journal of computers in mathematics and science teaching Vol. 34; no. 2; pp. 155 - 173
Main Author Gadanidis, George
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education 01.04.2015
Subjects
Coding
Concept Formation
Educational Change
Mathematical Concepts
Mathematical Logic
Mathematics Instruction
Teaching Methods
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Summary:The history of mathematics educational reform is replete with innovations taken up enthusiastically by early adopters without significant transfer to other classrooms. This paper explores the coupling of coding and mathematics education to create the possibility that coding may serve as a Trojan Horse for mathematics education reform. That is, once we accept that young children are able to learn complex and abstract coding concepts, such as algorithms, loops, variables and conditional statements, then we are more likely to also accept that they can also learn more complex and abstract ideas of mathematics. In addition, coding is a natural fit to mathematics, as it can be used to model and investigate mathematical relationships and as coding and mathematics have a shared logical structure.
ISSN:0731-9258