Abstract
Schubring, G. (2023). Transitions from school mathematics to university mathematics – an international variable for educational policies. Asian Journal for Mathematics Education, 2(4), 393-412. doi:10.1177/27527263231212715
The author contacted the Journal Editors to inform them that he had detected an error in his article, affecting in particular Table 2, p. 404.
Based upon what is not well explicated in the literature about the history of the two English universities, at Oxford and at Cambridge, it had been assumed that both had adopted after the Middle Ages a modernisation of their structures, analogous to those introduced at the Protestant universities on the Continent. In particular, it had been assumed that the four faculties also constituted the basic structures for organising the lectures and exams for their students, thus also organising them by proper exam boards. And it had been assumed that specialised professorships had been established as the main form of teaching in the faculties.
In contrast to the transition to the Philosophical Faculties in the Protestant universities, it was revealed by new research as the decisive difference that the teaching staff was not specialised professors but lecturers – and that these lecturers continued to be generalists, not specialised in their teaching subjects, as in Medieval Times. From the end of the 15th century, colleges began to appoint lecturers, beyond the tutors who had to take care of the students, who had to reside in a college. Eventually, it was college lecturers who would teach the entire arts curriculum – and even of the other faculties. The table has been amended to visualise that colleges were the dominant structural element of the Oxbridge universities, while the faculties exerted only a minor structural importance – emphasising thus the name “Collegiate University” for this structure.
The corrected Table 2 is attached. The table has been replaced and article updated to reflect the changes.
The Journal Editors confirm that the changes do not alter the article findings.
Table 2: a) structure of the Calvinist-Reformed education system; b) corrected structure of the English education system, showing the colleges dominating all the teaching at the universities, different from the faculties like in the Protestant universities on the Continent.