Abstract:

High-school mathematics curricula in most countries do not reach beyond the 18th century, mainly due to the hierarchical structure of nearly all topics in mathematics and to their everlasting nature. Consequently, students graduate high-school having little or no idea about contemporary mathematics, about its open-ended creative nature, or about the major role its applications play in various aspects of their life. Nevertheless, mathematicians and mathematics educators commonly agree that it is of utmost importance to provide high-school students with some taste of modern mathematics, firstly in order to make them aware of mathematics being a part of human culture and of human intellectual property, and not less important in order to open for them a door to future career in mathematics or in math-related areas.

How might it be possible to communicate the true nature of contemporary mathematics, to ALL high-school students, without harming their progress in learning the heavily loaded mandatory curriculum, and despite the gap between their knowledge and the background required for in-depth understanding of contemporary mathematics? Furthermore, can the ordinary high-school mathematics teacher be expected to facilitate it despite the gap between the effort it takes to be a full-time mathematics teacher and the effort it takes to keep up-to-date in contemporary mathematics?

As a method for narrowing these gaps, Movshovitz-Hadar (2008) suggested interweaving Mathematics News Snapshots (MNSs) in the ordinary teaching of high-school mathematics on a regular basis. The MNSs are not meant to be complete and in-depth, but merely a ‘glass-bottom boat tour’ over the overwhelming 'ocean of mathematics' (Sevryuk, 2006) without 'getting wet'...
As defined by Amit and Movshovitz-Hadar (2011), each MNS is an intermezzo with three main characteristics:
(i) A mathematical result published in the professional literature in the past 3-4 decades;
(ii) Exposition of up to 30 minutes focusing on the new result, elaborating on its history, the main underlying ideas and the people involved in its creation, while
(iii) taking into account students’ limited background, preferably linking the result to some topics in the curriculum.

We have developed so far 24 different MNSs, focusing on various recent results (e.g. The Art Gallery problem; Benford's Law; The Cake-Cutting problem; The double bubble problem; Fermat's Last Theorem; Goldbach's (weak) conjecture; Julia's sets and the invention of Fractals; Kepler's conjecture; Map Colouring; Mobius' strip and its recent applications; Origami and its applications; Pentagonal tiling; Prime numbers search.) For a full list and more details see http://www.MNS.co.il.

These MNSs have been empirically implemented in grades 10-12 of various high-schools in Israel. They were found highly influential on both teachers and their students at various levels of mathematical competency in terms of views and curiosity about mathematics, and its role in society.

The project is ripe for international collaboration in English-speaking countries in two directions:
(i) Further development of MNSs, and
(ii) an empirical study of the impact of implementing the existing MNSs.

In our presentation we'll share a sample MNS, analyse it against the rationale of the project and the guidelines for MNS authors, and set the ground for future collaboration based upon results from the follow-up study accompanying the project in Israel.

Keywords:

High-school mathematics, Contemporary mathematics, Math-News-Snapshots, Curricular change, International collaboration.