Understanding Mathematical Explanation: Uniting Philosophical and Educational Perspectives

The workshop is funded by the National Science Foundation (SES-1921688) and is aimed at bringing together academics who study the notion of mathematical explanation from philosophical and from educational/psychological perspectives. The idea is to bring together philosophers of mathematics, epistemologists, psychologists, and mathematics educators, to discuss how developments in their own fields could meaningfully contribute to the work on mathematical explanation where their fields intersect. In particular, we want to explore the ways in which mathematical explanation engenders understanding, by focusing on the relationship between different types of philosophical accounts of mathematical explanation, educational approaches to the characterization of effective explanations in the mathematics classroom, and work at the intersection of these two perspectives.