Journal of Mathematics and the Arts | 2019
Editorial
Abstract
There is a long history of the mutual influence of mathematics and art, perhaps most obviously in the developing understanding of perspective among artists which was to have a profound influence on mathematicians’ understanding of geometry. Aspects of mathematics were part of every artist’s education until well into the twentieth century, and by the 1960s there was an increasing awareness of the importance of visual education for everyone [1]. Over the following decades mathematics educators developed ways to bring art into their teaching [e.g. 2,3], and recent support for initiatives that integrate art with science, technology, engineering and mathematics have stimulated further interest [e.g. 4]. The response to the call for submissions to this special issue of the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts devoted to education indicates how strong it has become. The number of submissions to JMA generally has increased over the past two years so Taylor & Francis have allocated more pages to it, but, even with the increase, a double issue cannot accommodate all of the submissions accepted for the special issue. By the 2017 October deadline there were 30, from all parts of the world. An international team of reviewers worked intensively together with the authors to finalize their articles, and finally 12 submissions out of those accepted were selected to be included here. The main aim was to present a representative sample of thewide range of submissions that have been accepted, and there is no implication that those that are not published here but have been kept for later regular issues are of lower quality. In fact some that the editors think are particularly strong will appear later. The papers that are here represent a wide variety of artistic disciplines in combination with mathematics in a range of educational contexts, and it is encouraging to know that what might seem to be a very narrowly defined area includes so much diversity. The response to the call for papers has been truly international, and it has been interesting to see how priorities vary so much across different countries. Many submissions describe some kind of art being used in a classroom-setting to provide a context for learning mathematics, but in some examples, such as Exponentials and logarithms: a proposal for a classroom art project, the primary focus is the art rather than mathematics: in the words of one article, ‘What about the other direction, using science and fact to help develop and refine art and design?’ Generally such work is collaborative, and often includes architects, such as in reports of two college-level projects: Geometry in the Walnut Grove: an applied mathematical approach to art and Sensual Mathematics. National policies on education vary over time, and fromcountry to country. The emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration in the new Finnish National Core Curriculum for students younger than college-age, described in Integrative phenomena in visual arts and mathematics, could inspire innovative approaches in both mathematics and art education. From another part of Europe, Is the relationship between art and mathematics addressed thoroughly in Spanish secondary school textbooks? is about mathematics (and not art)