From jaimecs at mat.uc.pt Sun Jun 29 01:45:24 2008 From: jaimecs at mat.uc.pt (Jaime Carvalho e Silva) Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:45:24 +0100 Subject: [ICMI-News] ICMI News 4: June 2008 Message-ID: ICMI News 4: June 2008 A Bimonthly Email Newsletter from the ICMI-International Commission on Mathematical Instruction Editor: Jaime Carvalho e Silva, Dep. Matematica, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal CONTENTS 1. Editorial: Celebrating ICMI's progress, voicing where and how we need to grow 2. More news about the 11th ICME-International Congress on Mathematical Education 3. ICME-11: Ibero-American Forum 4. Experiencing Mathematics at ICME-11 5. Citation Statistics - a document released by IMU 6. IOWME welcomes you! 7. Website on the History of ICMI 8. An "ICMI Reading Room" at Springer 9. Extended deadline for contributions to Study 19 10. New Journal in Maths Education - INDIA 11. Calendar of Events of Interest to the ICMI Community 12. Historical vignettes: The almost failure of founding IMUK/ICMI 13. Subscribing to ICMI News ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Editorial: Celebrating ICMI's progress, voicing where and how we need to grow ICMI News 2 appeared immediately prior to the ICMI Centennial Symposium hosted by the Italian community of mathematicians and mathematics educators in Rome in March. This fourth issue of the ICMI Newsletter appears immediately prior to our Congress in Mexico - ICME-11. By now, those who will be attending will be preparing their presentations, and for their travel to and participation in the Congress. We look forward to meeting and interacting with colleagues in mathematics education across the world. We have noted in previous newsletters the significance of this Congress for ICMI as an organisation. At the General Assembly on 6 July, we will be voting in a new Executive Committee who will take office in 2010. This will be the first time in our history that the President, Vice-Presidents, Secretary-General and Members-at-Large of the Executive Committee will be voted in by the ICMI community. Previously, this election occurred at the International Congress of Mathematicians. This is an historic occasion, particularly considering we have just celebrated our Centenary! And as we do this, we take note at the numerous countries that are not yet part of the ICMI community. Across Africa, for example, a small handful of countries are members. While the current and past Executives have made much progress in broadening ICMI's reach, there remains much for the current and new Executives to do in extending ICMI's work. A quick journey through the ICME-11 website and the various activities that will be in session during the Congress shows the breadth and depth of mathematics education activity across the world. Those who will attend will have opportunity to engage with developments in mathematics education across topics, levels, interest areas, research domains and national contexts. Amidst this explosion of activity, we nevertheless need to attend to the challenges levelled at ICMI in the closing session of the Centennial Symposium. The majority of the world's children attend school in relatively poor material conditions; thousands upon thousands do not have the privilege of completing a primary school education. How does the research we do speak to these conditions? A critical and perhaps rhetorical question was asked whether indeed the work of the organisation can and does impact globally, across the economic and technological divide. More specifically, in what ways does the work we do contribute to the Millennium goals of universal primary education by 2015? These questions complement those posed by Vice President Bill Barton in issue no. 2 of this Newsletter. He focused importantly on communication, on understanding and working with diversity, on learning to listen and hear each other in our similarities and differences. As we approach ICME-11, and celebrate our historic coming of age, it is important to ensure that we take up the challenge posed at the Centennial: that we steer our work to increasing access to mathematics education for all. A number of sessions in the Congress, including Plenary sessions, have this challenge in focus. I look forward to discussion during and after the Congress, through our various channels of communication. In particular, we should mark this place, and ask in 2012: what is our progress? I look forward to seeing you in Monterrey. Jill Adler, Vice-President, ICMI, jill.adler at wits.ac.za ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. More news about the 11th ICME-International Congress on Mathematical Education The program of ICME-11 is full of interesting activities. So full in fact that we cannot report it here in any way. So I am just going to pick up a few of the activities just to show how diverse ICME-11 is (the Ibero-american Forum and the exhibition "Experiencing Mathematics" are mentioned further below). The program includes approximately 60 regular lectures, running in five time slots in the congress timetable, each with around 12 simultaneous lectures. This is going to force evryone to make tough choices! Just a glimpse of the choices available: * A course: "Mathematics and Technology" for preservice secondary school teachers, Christiane Rousseau (Canada) * Ethnomathematics at the Margin of Europe. A Pagan Calendar in Modern Times, Krist?n Bjarnad?ttir (Iceland) * For a Comparative History of Mathematics Education, Wagner Rodrigues Valente (Brazil) * The Challenges for School Mathematics in Japan, Shizumi Shimizu (Japan) * Mathematical terminology in teaching and learning mathematics in African languages, Mercy Kazima (Malawi) * The Loss of Intuition, Eduardo Mancera Mart?nez (Mexico) I hope you see the point: lots of diverse and interesting stuff. Several Survey Teams will report their activity, like the one on "Mathematics education in multicultural and multilingual environments" that will be exactly the theme of a future ICMI Study. There will be more than 50 workshops (a lot of them will be given in Spanish) about hot topics like "Uniting the World by Teaching with Technology", "Discrete Mathematics for Pre-Secondary Teachers", or "Mathematics from ages 0 to 18: a collaborative teacher training methodology joining teachers of all levels of education". There are also more than 50 Sharing Experiences Groups, small groups of participants designed to exchange and discuss experiences in a well-defined theme of common interest. Topics offered include a discussion about the personal Archives of Ubiratan D'Ambrosio or "The Interactive Whiteboard in the Mathematics Classroom". If to all this you add 38 Topic Study Groups and 28 Discussion Groups, you easily see that this program is overpacked with interesting sessions. See you in Monterrey. The Editor ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3. ICME-11: Ibero-american Forum Perspectives on development through collaboration Concurrent with other ICME-11 activities, meetings will organized that will address the issue of Ibero-American development and collaboration. In spite of their differences, Ibero-America countries share cultural roots, ethnic diversity, and a sense of identity. A forum where participants will explore the possibilities, advantages and perils of development through collaboration, not only within Ibero-America, but also with other regions, will be provided. The activities of the Ibero-American Forum are the following: 1.- Round Table "Meeting of Mathematical Associations in Ibero-America" there will be representation of Colombia, Brazil, Per?, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Guatemala, Dominican Republic and Venezuela 2.- Panel "Research on Mathematical Education" with the participation of colleagues from Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, Spain, Venezuela and Chile 3.- Round Table "Teacher Training" with participation from Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, Spain and Portugal 4.- Panel "Development of Mathematics in higher level and research" with participation of colleagues from Chile, Colombia and Mexico. 5.- Round Table "Mathematical Training for the Citizen" participations from Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba and Portugal. The Ibero-American Forum is scheduled on Tuesday (17:30-19), Friday and Saturday (17:30-19:30). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4. Experiencing Mathematics at ICME-11 Experiencing Mathematics at ICME11 - ?Por qu? las matem?ticas? An International Exhibition initiated and supported by UNESCO and created by Centre.Sciences, CCSTi region Centre-Orl?ans with the Tokay University (Tokio) and the Ateneo University de Manila (Philippines) From ICME-10 in Copenhagen to ICME-11 in Monterrey, more than 800 000 young people, their teachers and parents have visited this very interactive exhibition. "Experiencing Mathematics" has been present in more than 50 cities from 20 countries, in Southern Africa, Middle East, South-East Asia, Europe, now, in Latin America, Asia (India, Pakistan, Philippines), Portugal? and soon Sub-Saharan Africa, North America, Turkey and Brazil. This interactive exhibition is intended to show to all visitors that mathematics is: - astonishing, interesting and useful, - accessible, for the first steps, to everyone, - plays a large part in our daily life, - has an important role in our culture, sustainable development and progress. Which are the exhibition themes? Mathematics is central to our daily life but how many people, how many teachers realize each time they use a telephone or a credit card, listen to a compact disk, drive a car or board a plane, that mathematics is present? Similarly, when they buy a car or a house with credit, check the weather report or admire a work of art? Experiencing mathematics shows not only that mathematics is indispensable to daily life but can also be fun. In this exhibition you take pleasure to manipulate, to ask questions and try to find answers. In this exhibition, it's forbidden to "don't touch"!. 3 months ago, a virtual exhibition based on this interactive hands-on exhibition was proposed to teachers, especially for secondary teachers of southern countries. You can see it on the ICME-11 exhibition place or on http://www.ExperiencingMaths.org It was created by Centre.Sciences, initiated and supported, too, by Unesco basic Science education program. It will be present in Monterrey in the ICME-11 exhibition place: http://www.gamalog.com.mx/preregistro/icme11exp/plano.jpg Its itinerancy is supported by IMU, ICMI, CIMPA, local ministries of Science and Education and French Embassies. To know more: http://www.MathEx.org Michel Darche, mldarche at free.fr ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5. Citation Statistics - a document released by IMU The IMU has just released an important document, called "Citation Statistics", which we want to bring to your attention. IMU announced in July 2007 the creation of a committee on "Quantitative assessment of research" that was asked to investigate various aspects of impact factors and similar statistics based on citations. The committee was appointed jointly by the Executive Committees of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM), and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). It consisted of: - John Ewing (Providence, USA), chair, appointed by IMU - Robert Adler (Haifa, Israel), appointed by IMS - Peter Taylor (Melbourne, Australia), appointed by ICIAM. The terms of reference given to the committee can be found at: http://www.mathunion.org/Publications/2007/Charge-ComOnQuantAssessmRes070521.pdf The committee has addressed this charge by reviewing and discussing current practices along with an extensive literature on the use of citations to evaluate research. Its report, written from the perspective of mathematical scientists, was submitted to the Executive Committees of IMU, ICIAM, and IMS, and all three endorsed the report. The three organizations are making the report "Citation Statistics" public now. The report can be found at the following URL: http://www.mathunion.org/Publications/Report/CitationStatistics A press release that was mailed out to journalists is at: http://www.mathunion.org/Publications/PressRelease/2008-06-11/CitationStatistics This effort was triggered by numerous requests from IMU member countries, mathematical societies, important mathematical institutions, and individuals who reported the increasing use (and misuse) of impact factors and similarly of other citation-based indicators to measure the quality of research of individuals, departments, or whole institutions. IMU suggests that everybody not only read the report but also distribute it to administrators and decision-makers who are involved in the assessment of research quality, in order to give them a mathematical science perspective. IMU, ICIAM and IMS have agreed that, in order to assure as wide distribution as possible, journals, newsletters and similar publications that are interested in publishing this report will have the non-exclusive right to publish it in one of their issues. Please contact the newsletters/journals you are connected with and suggest publication of the report "Citation Statistics". All 3 organizations, representing the world community of pure, applied, and industrial mathematics and statistics, hope that the careful analysis and recommendations in this report will be considered by decision-makers who are making use of citation data in research assessment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6. IOWME welcomes you! INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION OF WOMEN AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION An affiliated study group of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction The International Organisation of Women and Mathematics Education (IOWME) provides an international focus for activity related to gender, education and mathematics. During the two decades of IOWME activity, the attainment profile for girls in mathematics has changed significantly in a number of countries but issues remain: young women opting out of mathematics; who identifies with mathematics and how; the ways that mathematics classrooms permit and perpetuate unhelpful stereotypes; and many more. Our main channel of communication is our website, which is maintained by Sheffield Hallam University, England. Our newsletter is published there three times a year and is key in maintaining the IOWME community. The newsletters contain a lively mix of the serious and the not-so-serious with full length academic articles, book reviews, news items from around the world, reports of past and future study group activities, items from ICMI, information about the work of study group members, ideas for teaching, commentary on gender issues in the news, quotations, jokes and cartoons. The newsletters can be viewed at our new website at http://extra.shu.ac.uk/iowme The ICMI Centenary has also involved us. Members participated in the Centennial celebrations in Rome in 2008 and we were also asked to participate in writing a history of IOWME. Using a storying methodology and drawing extensively on writings from members, it is a useful addition to the IOWME archive. We will be participating in ICME-11 in Mexico and hope to contribute towards making the eleventh Congress a rewarding and energising experience. International Convenor Hilary Povey Mathematics Education Centre Sheffield Hallam University England h.povey at shu.ac.uk Newsletter Editor Heather Mendick Institute for Policy Studies in Education London Metropolitan University England h.mendick at londonmet.ac.uk Hilary Povey, International Convenor, IOWME, h.povey at shu.ac.uk ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7. Website on the History of ICMI To celebrate the first hundred years of the ICMI a Symposium was held in Rome (March, 5-8 2008). Most events of the Symposium took place in the same place where the foundation of the Commission happened, namely the magnificent rooms of the Accademia dei Lincei, one of the oldest Academies in the world. Among the activities planned for the Symposium there is the website on the history of the ICMI, under the direction of Fulvia Furinghetti and Livia Giacardi (http://www.icmihistory.unito.it/, accessible also from the permanent web page of the Symposium http://www.unige.ch/math/EnsMath/). The aim of the website is to offer to the members of the community of mathematics educators elements that allow to delineate the full history of ICMI and some important features of this Commission. The moments in the history of the ICMI are listed in the "Timeline", together with the references to the sources of information. Direct access to historical documents and people is provided in the section devoted to "Documents". In the section "Interviews and film clips" opinions and memories of important chief characters in the life of ICMI are videotaped. The "Portrait gallery" contains the biographic cameos of the ICMI officers and of the honorary members who have passed away in the first hundred years. Some officers were professional mathematicians members ex-officio of the ICMI Executive Committee, others were researchers in pure mathematics with a strong interest in mathematics education evidenced by their activity in school milieu and by specific publications concerning aspects of mathematical instruction. When possible the authors of the cameos were chosen in the countries of the officer treated in the cameo; this allowed to involve colleagues of different countries and to share with them the spirit of our enterprise. The historical flavor is pervading also the sections of the recent past, the present and the future of the ICMI, namely "The Affiliated Study Groups" and "The International Congresses on Mathematical Education". We hope that our (Fulvia's and Livia's) work about the website of the history of ICMI is something more than a historical account, namely it is a way of strengthening the identity of ICMI community and an inspiration for the ICMI's future action. Fulvia Furinghetti, furinghetti at dima.unige.it ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8. An "ICMI Reading Room" at Springer In order to participate to the celebration of the 2005 and 2007 ICMI Awards to be presented at the opening ceremony of ICME-11, on July 7, 2008, in Monterrey, M?xico, Springer is pleased to announce the launching of the Springer "ICMI Reading Room" Up to December 31, 2008, members of the international community of mathematics educators will have open access, via SpringerLink.com, to selected works published in Springer journals of the four most recent ICMI medallists (Paul Cobb, Ubiratan D'Ambrosio, Jeremy Kilpatrick and Anna Sfard). This material, which represents important milestones in the recent development of the field of mathematics education, can be freely downloaded by accessing the url http://www.springer.com/education/mathematics+education/icmi+reading+room+welcome Information about the ICMI Awards can be obtained by visiting http://www.mathunion.org/ICMI/Awards/ Bernard R. Hodgson, Secretary-General of ICMI, bhodgson at mat.ulaval.ca ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9. Extended deadline for contributions to Study 19 Due to numerous requests for an extension, the International Programme Committee (IPC) of ICMI Study 19 on "Proof and Proving in Mathematics Education" has agreed to move the deadline for submission of papers from June 30, 2008 to August 31, 2008. The following are the new dates: Submission deadline: Sunday, August 31, 2008 Notification of acceptance: Saturday, November 15, 2008 The IPC would like to thank all those who have already submitted their papers. We also urge others to submit their papers at their earliest convenience, well ahead of the new deadline of August 31. For more details, please see: http://www.icmi19.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10. New Journal in Maths Education - INDIA We are very pleased to announce the launching of our new journal Sutra - The International Journal of Mathematics Education, an official journal of the Technomathematics Research Foundation. We would like to invite you to submit manuscripts of your original articles, for possible publication in Sutra, which is a strictly peer-reviewed publication. All article submissions should be made electronically to TMRF Office [director at tmrfindia.org]. First issue will be published online in August 2008. Sutra is devoted to the interests of students and teachers of mathematics and mathematics education at various levels -- undergraduate through adult. The editors encourage the submission of a variety of manuscripts: expository research articles, including experiments, case studies, surveys, philosophical studies, and historical studies; articles about research, including literature reviews; classroom notes; critiques of articles and books; and brief commentaries on issues pertaining to mathematics research and teaching. For complete details, please read the submission guidelines and aims & scope of the journal. We also welcome special issue proposals on various themes on mathematics and its applications. [http://www.tmrfindia.org/sutra/submit.html] The journal is published twice a year. Review procedure: All manuscripts are subject to anonymous peer review by knowledgeable scholars and, if accepted, may be subject to revision. Materials submitted to Sutra should not be under consideration by other publishers, nor should they be previously published in any form. We shall be glad to receive your contributions at your earliest convenience. Please publicize this new journal amongst your colleagues for possible contribution. Thanks! Sutra - The International Journal of Mathematics Education, T.M.R.F., Kolhapur 416001, INDIA URL: http://www.tmrfindia.org/sutra.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11. Calendar of Events of Interest to the ICMI Community International Society for Design and Development in Education ISDDE 2008 conference Egmond aan Zee, the Netherlands, June 29 - July 2, 2008 http://www.fi.uu.nl/isdde/ Joint ICMI /IASE Study Statistics Education in School Mathematics: Challenges for Teaching and Teacher Education ICMI Study and IASE Round Table Conference ITESM, Monterrey, Mexico, June 30-July 4, 2008 http://www.ugr.es/~icmi/iase_study/ ICME-11 - Mexico 2008 11th International Congress on Mathematical Education Monterrey, Mexico, July 6 - 13, 2008. http://icme11.org/ HPM 2008: History and Pedagogy of Mathematics The HPM Satellite Meeting of ICME-11, National Mexican University, Mexico City (UNAM), Mexico, July 14-18, 2008 http://www.red-cimates.org.mx/HPM2008.htm Fifth European Congress of Mathematics Amsterdam RAI Center, Netherlands, July 14-18, 2008 http://www.5ecm.nl/ PME32 & PME-NA30 Mexico joint conference Morelia, Mexico, July 17-21 2008. http://www.pme32-na30.org.mx/annou.htm PME33: Thessaloniki - Greece, July 19-24, 2009 PME34: Univ. Fed. Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil - July 2010 http://igpme.org/ Towards Digital Mathematics Library (DML 2008) Birmingham, UK, July 27, 2008 http://www.fi.muni.cz/~sojka/dml-2008.xhtml MathFest 2008 Madison, WI, USA, July 31- August 2 2008 http://www.maa.org/ 10th Iranian Mathematics Education Conference (IMEC-10) Yazd, Iran, August 12-15, 2008 Contact: a_rejali at cc.iut.ac.ir, soheila_azad at yahoo.com http://www.imec10yazd.com 4th European Workshop on Mathematical & Scientific e-Contents Trondheim, Norway, September 11-13, 2008, http://www.ntnu.no/delta/workshop/ TIME-2008: Technology and its Integration in Mathematics Education Tshwane Univ. of Tech., Buffelspoort, South Africa, September 22-26, 2008 http://time.tut.ac.za/ 41st Korean National Meeting of Mathematics Education Donguei National University, Korea, October 31 - November 1, 2008 yhchoe1940 at yahoo.co.kr ATCM-13: 13th Asian Technology Conference in Mathematics Bangkok, Thailand, December 15-19, 2008 http://atcm.mathandtech.org 3rd international conference to review research on Science, TEchnology and Mathematics Education Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (TIFR), Mumbai, India, January 5-9, 2009 http://web.gnowledge.org/episteme3/ ICTMT-9 - 9th Int Conf on Technology in Mathematics Teaching Metz, France, July 4-8, 2009 http://www.ictmt9.org "Models in Developing Mathematics Education" The Mathematics Education into the 21st Century Project Dresden, Saxony, Germany, September 11-17, 2009 alan at rogerson.pol.pl ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 12. Historical vignettes: The almost failure of founding IMUK/ICMI As is well known, the ICMI was founded in 1908 following a proposal published in 1905 by David Eugene Smith and reiterated in the pedagogical section of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) at Rome. The intense, active role Germany played in achieving the aims of ICMI is also familiar. Surprisingly, however, the founding almost failed owing to the machinations of a German participant, himself committed to mathematics education. The imminent failure of Smith's proposal is clear from Eileen Donoghue's (1987) study. According to Smith's papers, in the fourth section of the ICM, on 9 April, while the German astronomer Archenhold was presiding, Smith presented his paper and proposed establishing the international committee. Archenhold favoured the proposal and took the vote, which passed. Nevertheless, Smith thought it necessary to have the proposal reconfirmed at the last meeting of the fourth section, on 11 April. Then, however, the presider was the German mathematics teacher and educator Max Simon. Simon, as Donoghue reports, "was one of the few who voiced an objection to Smith's proposal" (Donoghue 1987, 267). She observes, "While Smith and his supporters were in the lobby discussing maneuvers, Simon adjourned the meeting." Because it was the last meeting of the section, Smith's proposal would have been postponed until the next Congress, 4 years later! Donoghue (1987) reports how Smith prevented the premature death of his idea by trickily dealing with standing orders: "Since Italy was the official host country for the Congress, Smith urged Professors Castelnuovo and Enriques to exercise their procedural right and reconvene the meeting" (ibid., 268), which Enriques and others managed to achieve. Only then was the motion voted on and transmitted to the General Assembly for its approval. It was adopted in the closing session that same afternoon. A second source for the near failure of Smith's proposal is a report by Walther Lietzmann, who shortly thereafter became Klein's assistant in handling ICMI matters. Lietzmann reported on an incident at the 9 April session where Smith gave his talk. August Gutzmer, one of the key German promoters, together with Klein, of the reform of mathematics teaching, reported on the movement. In the discussion following Gutzmer's talk, Max Simon criticized those reforms. Presiding at the last session, Simon used his position to defeat Smith's proposal. Lietzmann quotes Simon on the reform proposals: "The good is not new; and the new is not good!" (Lietzmann 1960, 44; my transl., G.S.). The conflict between Klein and the modernizers, on the one hand, and the defenders, like Simon, of traditional approaches, on the other hand, has been seen as a rivalry between two competing scientific schools in German mathematics education (Burscheid 1984). Simon was a mathematics teacher at a gymnasium whose main interest was in geometry, where he advocated classical Euclidean methods. Gert Schubring, gert.schubring at uni-bielefeld.de Note from the editor: Some references: * EILEEN F. DONOGHUE 1987, The origins of a professional mathematics education program at Teachers College, Ed.D. Thesis, Columbia University New York, Teachers College * REFORMES A ACCOMPLIR; DANS L'ENSEIGNEMENT DES MATH?MATIQUES (Suite), Chapitre: Opinion de M. Dav.-Eug. Smith Professeur au Teachers College, Columbia University, New-York., L'Enseignement Math?matique / Volume 7 (1905), p. 469-471. All the numbers of the journal "L'Enseignement Math?matique" are available on the web at the address http://retro.seals.ch/digbib/fr/vollist?UID=ensmat-001 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 13. SUBSCRIBING TO ICMI News There are two ways of subscribing to ICMI News: 1. Click on http://www.mathunion.org/ICMI/Mailinglist with a Web browser and go to the "Subscribe" button to subscribe to ICMI News online. 2. Send an e-mail to icmi-news-request at mathunion.org with the Subject-line: Subject: subscribe In both cases you will get an e-mail to confirm your subscription so that misuse will be minimized. ICMI will not use the list of ICMI News addresses for any purpose other than sending ICMI News, and will not make it available to others. Previous issues can be seen at: http://www.mathunion.org/pipermail/icmi-news ===================================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: