The new emphasis in the Singapore mathematics education is on Big Ideas (Charles, 2005). This book contains more than 15 chapters from various experts on mathematics education that describe various aspects of Big Ideas from theory to practice. It contains chapters that discuss the historical development of mathematical concepts, specific mathematical concepts in relation to Big Ideas in mathematics, the spirit of Big Ideas in mathematics and its enactment in the mathematics classroom.
This book presents a wide spectrum of issues related to Big Ideas in mathematics education. On the one end, we have topics that are mathematics content related, those that discuss the underlying principles of Big Ideas, and others that deepen the readers' knowledge in this area, and on the other hand there are practice oriented papers in preparing practitioners to have a clearer picture of classroom enactment related to an emphasis on Big Ideas.