Secondary school mathematics teachers and their training in pre- and post-unity Italy (1810–1920)

This paper traces the evolution of the teaching profession in Italy during its transition from a cluster of small, individual states to a single, unified nation. Our focus will be on the plans carried out for teacher training in the period from 1810, when the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa was created to train prospective teachers, to 1920, when the Scuole di Magistero (teacher training schools) were suppressed. In this period mathematics teaching was restyled and a new figure of mathematics teachers emerged. To emphasize some of the relevant aspects of this new figure we outline short biographies of three respected teachers whose actions affected the three domains that characterized the new professionalism: production of textbooks, publication of didactic mathematical journals, involvement in the community of mathematics educators.