Forms of Mathematical Knowledge

What mathematics is entailed in knowing to act in a moment? Is tacit, rhetorical knowledge significant in mathematics education? What is the role of intuitive models in understanding, learning and teaching mathematics? Are there differences between elementary and advanced mathematical thinking? Why can't students prove? What are the characteristics of teachers' ways of knowing?
This book focuses on various types of knowledge that are significant for learning and teaching mathematics.

Cumulative research within a number of traditions has shown that effective teaching calls for distinctive, identifiable forms of subject-related knowledge and thinking, yet the significance and complexity of such knowledge is not well represented in professional debate and policymaking. This is a particularly pressing issue within mathematics education, given world-wide aspirations to improve quality of teaching and learning in the face of widespread difficulties in recruiting teachers who are conventionally well-qualified in mathematics and confident in the subject.

Chemistry shapes and creates the disposition of the world's resources and provides novel substances for the welfare and hazard of our civilisation at an exponential rate. Can we model the evolution of chemical knowledge? This book not only provides a positive answer to the question, it provides the formal models and available data to model chemical knowledge as a complex dynamical system based on the mutual interaction of the social, semiotic and material systems of chemistry. These systems, which have evolved over the history, include the scientists and institutions supporting chemical knowledge (social system); theories, concepts and forms of communication (semiotic system) and the substances, reactions and technologies (material system) central for the chemical practice.