ABSTRACT
Different people have different views about what maths is and what it means to learn and to teach it-and they use different language to explain their ideas. Many people, including a large proportion of parents, see maths as a list of things to learn-a body of knowledge to be stored. In contrast, many teachers talk as if mathematics is something that is constructed in the mind-a way of thinking. Coordinators need to communicate to many different people about what happens in their school and it’s vitally important to be able to recognise the different viewpoints and the language that accompanies them. It’s helpful to be able to use the language that others use and to move between the different ideas that people express. For readers who want to delve deeply, there is an interesting and worthwhile book edited by Paul Ernest (1994).
