{"id":8093,"date":"2013-09-10T12:30:34","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T16:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=8093"},"modified":"2016-02-17T13:29:50","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T18:29:50","slug":"a-genealogy-of-math-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=8093","title":{"rendered":"A Different Kind of Family Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Professor<\/a>
Professor Farshid Safi\u2019s genealogy project provides insights into the influential people, institutions, organizations, and areas of research that shape how math is taught and learned.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Assistant Math and Statistics Professor Farshid Safi <\/b>is working on a multiyear genealogy project that traces the evolution and development of the field of mathematics education in the United States.<\/p>\n

By compiling qualitative data from numerous mathematics-education-related doctoral dissertations published in the U.S., and creating a system that lets people visualize and analyze that data, Safi\u2019s project will provide insights into the influential people, institutions, organizations, and areas of research that shape how math is taught and learned.<\/p>\n

The work involves collecting and categorizing a massive amount of data on the authors, advisers, institutional affiliations, and research focus areas of the more than 11,000 mathematics-education-related dissertations published during the last two centuries. Complicating that process is the fact that much of the material is only available in hard-copy format, meaning Safi and his student collaborator, Sahnaz Saleem \u201914<\/b>, must digitally extract the data they are after before they can work with it.<\/p>\n

The two are about 70 percent of the way through that process, they reported, and now have a data set large enough to provide some meaningful insights. Using data mining techniques and third-party visualization software, Saleem said
\nthe two can see patterns emerge that reveal how certain individuals and institutions have impacted the production of new knowledge in the field of mathematics education.<\/p>\n

A math and statistics major, Saleem said what\u2019s most valuable about the experience for her is having the chance to apply classroom learning in a real-world context. \u201cIn class we work with perfect data sets, so it\u2019s easy to do an analysis. But when you have a real-life data set like with this genealogy project, the work is much more difficult because the data isn\u2019t perfect,\u201d Saleem said.<\/p>\n

Assistant Professor of Interactive Multimedia John Kuiphoff <\/b>is also working with Safi to build a project website and expand the data-visualization capabilities. That latter part is particularly important, Safi said, because it provides the \u201cmosaic\u201d people need to clearly see which individuals, institutions, and research topics have had the greatest impact on how math has been, and continues to be, learned and taught. \u201cUntil now, primarily linear, narrative histories of the field have been available,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As the data set becomes more complete, that mosaic might reveal more than how the field has developed and evolved; it could also impact how math teaching and learning can move forward, Safi said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn education, there seems to be a pendulum effect where, every 15 years or so, people say,\u00a0 \u2018We have to overhaul everything.\u2019 Then years go by and people say, \u2018We have to go back to where we were,\u2019\u201d Safi said. \u201cIf we had a better sense of how we arrived to that point, that could better serve us moving forward. Subsequently, this perspective and knowledge could influence what happens on the K\u201316 level, which would impact decisions and potential policies for years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By tracing the history of math education, Professor Farshid Safi’s genealogy project could impact future policy and practice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-2013","category-on-campus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}