An Evaluation of UNESCO Publications on Mathematics Education: From 1989 to 2013

Abstract

The word “UNESCO” was created by being taken the initials of “United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization”. UNESCO has undertaken two main objectives as it can be understood from the name of the organization. This organization is an international organization that works for the expedience of the world in long term and as a whole aims to serve to the aims of United Nations including humanitarian purposes. Moreover, the organization aims to support and develop all aspects of the concepts of education, science and culture. Based on these purposes, UNESCO has provided the preparation of many publications as book, journal, report, and article etc. in the field of education. It is seen that some of these publications are related with mathematics education. The aim of this study is to examine the publications of mathematics education published by UNESCO from “Standards and Principles for School Mathematics” document of NCTM issued in 1989 to present. These publications are comprised of article, book, report and documents placed in the publications of education in the web site of the organization. 272 publications of UNESCO were examined with document analysis.  In the study, document analysis method, one of qualitative research methods, was used. Investigated publications were analyzed in terms of publication years, publication types, subject areas, contents and related countries. Descriptive analysis method was used in the process of analysis of publications. As the result of investigation of these publications of UNESCO about mathematics education, it is revealed that the publications focused especially on mathematics education programs of countries, international measurement and assessment exams as TIMMS, PISA and subjects about teaching and learning mathematics.