Revitalizing the curriculum: Using original sources, history, and writing in undergraduate mathematics.

摘要

Curriculum reform has become a very prominent issue in undergraduate mathematics. One avenue of reform in which there is currently a great deal of interest is the use of original sources, mathematical history, and writing assignments in the teaching of undergraduate mathematics. This thesis is a study of this current movement.;The early chapters of this thesis report some of the major recent and current efforts from the mathematical community to move in these directions. In these chapters, the author surveys some textbooks that are part of this movement, some of which are in pre-publication form; the work of individual researchers, including course materials and courses that they have designed; the Institute on the History of Mathematics; and institutions such as St. John's College that have implemented these ideas even beyond the mathematics curriculum.;The later chapters contain a summary of the author's attempts at using writing assignments and some mathematical history in his teaching at Idaho State University. In addition, these later chapters present sample course outlines written by the author for three calculus courses using historical sources and for two courses on the history of mathematics. These later chapters also present two units written by the author for use in undergraduate mathematics courses, one on Peano Arithmetic and one concerning the Hardy-Weinberg Principle from genetics.