Analysis of real world problems in mathematics textbooks of early twentieth and twenty-first century Turkish education: political and social reflections1

Abstract

This paper aims to show that historical eras from the perspective of socio-political approaches can be linked to the context of mathematical real world problems in conformity with the eras they were used. Three mathematics high school textbooks were selected from the Hamidian era [1876–1909], Early Republican era [1923–28] and the Contemporary era [2002–]. A content analysis was carried out by taking the political events into consideration and linked them with the context of the problems. The problem contexts were examined under four general categories, military, gender, religion, and work force. Findings of the study indicated that mathematics could be related to socio-political aspects of history.