Educational Alternatives Journal of International Scientific Publications www.scientific-publications.net CONSEPTION OF MATHEMATICS TEACHING AS A NECESSARY PART OF ANY CONCEPTION (OF DEVELOPMENT) OF MATHEMATICS EDUCATION Aslanbek Kh. Naziev Ryazan State University, Russian Federation Abstract We claim that any conception of mathematics education must contain a part devoted to the definition of concepts. Namely, when we are speaking about any conception of mathematics education we must have clear understanding of words “mathematics” and “education”. Moreover, and this is quite important, we must know precisely what is meant under “mathematics teaching”. This last knowledge we call “conception of mathematics teaching”. After that we propose and examine our own conception of mathematics teaching which we call “the conception of humanitarianly-oriented mathematics teaching”. Key words: mathematics, education, teaching of mathematics, conception of mathematics education, conception of mathematics teaching 1. INTRODUCTION In the last few decades we have in Russia (and USSR) sufficiently large amount of conceptions (of development) of mathematical education. All these conceptions were written in so far as there exists unique understanding of the words “mathematics”, “education”, “teaching”, etc. Our first goal here is to show that it is not right. So, in order to somewhat “conception” of mathematics education may be named conception one must define concepts (the mentioned words). In this section we only show that the words mentioned above may have different meaning and thereby show the necessity of what we call “conception of mathematics teaching”. 1.1. Let us begin with the question: “What is education?” Not so long ago in the USSR and Russia we have approximately the following answer to this question: “Education is socially organized and regulated process of continuous transference of socially significant experience from previous to following generations. The main way to receive education is to take a course of training in the system of educational institutions.” (Леднёв 1991) According to this definition education was the process of transferring and receiving. And what one can see in the most classrooms were in excellent accordance with this formulation. “Who is not ready to the lesson? Who did not prepare their homework?” Visible on the faces of the students is a mixture of astonishment and sympathy to stupid teacher. What is he saying? What homework? We came here to receive a transfer. Have you transfer — give it us. No — leave us alone. It is very doubtful that we would like to continue this story. So, one must find another definition of education. Fortunately, there exists one, and we remember it in the sequel. 1.2. Now, turn to another question: “What is mathematics?” The following passage from the book on preparation of pupils to the Final State Examination in Russia (Ященко & Семёнов & Захаров 2009) will help us to see the need of precise answer to this question. The authors wrote (can you believe?): “Uncertainty and lack of knowledge of the subject can be compensated by the knowledge of special tricks and techniques <...> Page 1103 ISSN 1314-7277, Volume 12, 2014