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History of Teaching Arithmetic

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Handbook on the History of Mathematics Education

Abstract

The history of teaching arithmetic is traced back to the early-Modern Age Italian reckoning masters and their arithmetic textbooks – libri di abbaco – based on the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. After the introduction of printing, arithmetic textbooks were printed in a variety of European languages. The textbooks had standard content until the twentieth century: mainly the four arithmetic operations in whole numbers and fractions and proportions in the form of the Rule of Three. The first books were aimed at self-study, while the gradual establishment of schools changed their use, as did impacts from influential educators such as Comenius and Pestalozzi. After the mid-twentieth century, radical changes in arithmetic teaching were made in the worldwide introduction of the new math.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Wenn mein Leben einen Wert hat, so besteht er darin, dass ich das Quadrat zum Fundamente einer Anschauung erhob, die das Volk nie hatte.

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  1. School of Education, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland

    Kristín Bjarnadóttir

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  1. Kristín Bjarnadóttir
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Correspondence to Kristín Bjarnadóttir .

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  1. Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA

    Alexander Karp

  2. Universität Bielefeld Institut für Didaktik der Mathematik, Bielefeld, Germany

    Gert Schubring

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Bjarnadóttir, K. (2014). History of Teaching Arithmetic. In: Karp, A., Schubring, G. (eds) Handbook on the History of Mathematics Education. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9155-2_21

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