Visualizations and Visualization in Mathematics Education
John S. Macnab, Linda M. Phillips, Stephen P. Norris · SensePublishers eBooks · 2012
There is no shortage of interest in visualization in mathematics education. Mathematics textbooks are filled with pictures, diagrams, and graphs. There are video lessons available for countless topics. Graphing calculators have become commonplace in secondary school classrooms. Dedicated computer programs such as Geometer’s Sketchpad, Mathematica, Maple, and the open-source programs that are intended to replicate many of their functions are now in use in secondary and postsecondary mathematics classrooms. Data visualization programs are becoming common in statistics classes. And there are countless applets available on line. Given the sheer volume of visualization materials available for mathematics education, it is surprising how little empirical support there is for their use. In addition, there are no robust educational theories of how to use best visualization in mathematics education. There are two powerful but conflicting cognitive theories of visualization, and both point to some practical application of visualization in spite of their mutual inconsistency.