Mathematics Education Reform Movements and Korean Mathematics Curriculum

수학교육 개혁 운동과 우리나라 수학 교육과정

The purpose of this study is to investigate various mathematics education improvement or reform movements of Western Europe countries (United Kingdom, Germany, etc.) and the United States of America, to see the effects of those movements on Korean mathematics education circle, and to find a direction of Korean mathematics curriculum design. The third Korean mathematics curriculum was most affected by the new mathematics movement of the United States of America. This movement was emphasizing abstract structure, logical rigorousness and discovery learning of mathematics, which was fired from late fifties. Korean mathematics education circle imported the new mathematics early seventies from USA, but serious problems had been found at that time in USA. This study has pointed out that new math oriented Korean mathematics curriculum was not proper and the new mathematics itself was disastrous for most Korean students' learning. The study also points out that they hurried too much introducing the new mathematics and publishing new mathematics oriented textbooks but they had not sufficient teacher training programs. In our future mathematics curriculum reform, we have to remember such a historical lesson.