ABSTRACT
The main thesis of James T. Fey's paper is that "the emerging capabilities of calculators, computers, and other electronic information processing technology suggest revolutionary changes in the goals and teaching of algebra". He describes the capabilities of prototype software that can be used by secondary school students to develop algebraic concepts or to answer questions posed in the language of algebra. Fey describes five broad sets of issues that electronic information processing technology raises about school algebra. These issues are: the skills/ understanding connection; functions, relations, and applications; organized complexity; algorithms, recursion, and successive approximations; and algebraic structures. Research has consistently shown that educational change occurs in a socio-political context involving many people, products, and institutions. Fey completely ignores four factors within the socio-political context that influence school algebra today and which, no doubt, will continue to influence school algebra in the future: teachers, textbooks, evaluation, and articulation.
