Recovering mathematics: an oltolgical turn toward understanding the teaching of mathematics with children

Abstract

Recovering Mathematics: An Ontological Turn Toward Coming to Understand the Teaching of Mathematics with Children is an interpretive study into the teaching of mathematics to children. Drawing from Gadamer's (1989) ontological hermeneutics, this research examines lived experience through narrative pedagogic events to explore the idea of recovering mathematics as a living human enterprise for children and teachers in schools. Attending to Caputo's (1987) idea of returning to the original difficulty, this text attempts to keep the difficulty of teaching alive while resisting the metaphysics of presence. In Truth and Method (1989), Gadamer claims that the happening of events is essential for understanding. This philosophical inquiry embraces Gadamer's idea of "the fecundity of the individual case" as a way to explore and make meaning from lived experiences with children, teachers, and primary / elementary pre-service teachers. Recovering Mathematics hermeneutically considers the relationship of mathematics to teaching in terms of the past and the present, the particular and the general, the philosophical and the practical, the part and the whole. It is a philosophical exploration into what might be possible when it comes to teaching mathematics to children when the world, which includes the living world of mathematics, is allowed entry.