A few months ago, the London Mathematical Society introduced, without much fanfare, the De Morgan Journal, a “journal and blog on mathematics education and policy”. It can be found at http://education.lms.ac.uk/.
As the name implies, it does two jobs: it has papers (which can be substantial and presumably pass through some kind of editorial process), and blog posts (which so far are typically reports of things which have appeared elsewhere: some politician makes a speech about maths or IT in schools, or someone compares maths teaching in the USA and Finland, or whatever).
The very first paper is a reprint of a short article by the eponymous Augustus De Morgan, who was also founder and first president of the London Mathematical Society, about teaching induction – this first appeared in the Penny Cyclopedia in 1838. Two further papers have appeared: Roger Howe on “Three pillars of first grade mathematics”, and David Tall on “Perceptions, operations and proof in undergraduate mathematics”. Neither have attracted any comments as yet.
Some of the posts are more controversial. One reports a study in the USA which shows that
Elementary- and middle-school teachers who help raise their students’ standardized-test scores seem to have a wide-ranging, lasting positive effect on those students’ lives beyond academics, including lower teenage-pregnancy rates and greater college matriculation and adult earnings.
It is not clear whether these teachers raise their students’ test scores by the excellence of their teaching, or by encouraging cheating or feeding the students the test questions in advance. But even this post has not attracted a reply.
This journal and blog is clearly intended to be a forum. I am sure that people who read my blog will have opinions on some of the topics discussed there. Why not take a look, and make a comment, make a posting, or even submit a paper?
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