History in the Mathematics Laboratory: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

According to some researchers one of the ways of using history in mathematics teaching is the hermeneutic approach. In this paper we report on a classroom experiment where the teacher (A. D.) tried to apply this procedure in teaching the topic “exponential and logarithms” to 18-19 year-old students attending the final year of an Italian high school. The used historical sources are excerpts from Euler’s Introductio in analysin infinitorum. The involved students have a low motivation to study mathematics and their learning difficulties emerged also in our experiment. This fact stressed some elements of problematization of the hermeneutic approach that will be discussed in this paper.