ABSTRACT
The centre of mathematical activity within most secondary schools is the shared resources or common room where the maths teachers meet, prepare lessons and mark pupils’ work, store books and equipment and discuss ideas and experiences. Children come and go with requests, information and materials. Visitors to the department are introduced here and may perceive the scope of the mathematics curriculum displayed on notices, timetables and computer screens. It is evident in the way that schemes of work and shared resources are organized. The ethos of mathematics within the school emanates from this room along corridors to classrooms and, more frequently nowadays, to computer resource areas. It is usual for displays of children’s mathematics, puzzles, posters and information to line the walls of the corridors and add colour to the teaching rooms. This brightness may be a pale shadow of the atmosphere in the best primary schools but the notions of teaching and learning mathematics that underpin the activities are now common to both sectors. This chapter looks at the development of school mathematics since 1945. The era following the Second World War heralded several decades of increasing access to a mathematical education for all children. The nature of that mathematics is still an issue of considerable controversy.
