Recommendations of the Royaumont Seminar on primary school arithmetic : Influences in the Nordic countries

Abstract

Following the seminar on new thinking in school mathematics, held in Royaumont, France, in 1959, the Nordic countries took up cooperation on analysing the situation in mathematics education, to work out curriculum plans and write experimental texts. A Danish author, A. Bundgaard, and her collaborator wrote a textbook series for primary level which was translated into Icelandic. The text is analysed with respect to presentations on arithmetic education at the seminar and compared to previous and later texts in use. The results show that the declared intention of the reform movement to emphasize the structure of the number system and build its presentation on set-theoretical concepts gradually faded out while the study of numbers built on primes and divisibility became a revived topic in Icelandic school mathematics. Furthermore new topics such as statistics and introduction to probability entered the curriculum.