[ICMI-News] ICMI News 18: June 2011
J Carvalho e Silva
jaimecs at mat.uc.pt
Mon Jul 11 22:54:57 CEST 2011
ICMI News 18: June 2011
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: The greatest calamity in the history of science
2. ICME-12: 2nd announcement
3. ICME-12: Discussion groups deadline extended
4. ICME-12: Topic Study Groups are sending Call for Papers
5. ICMI Digital Library: The first five ICMI Studies are online
6. ICMI elections: the Nominating Committee is working
7. XIII CIAEM - Inter-American Conference on Mathematics Education
8. ICMI book for study 18 was launched
9. International Colloquium - A Hommage to Michèle Artigue
10. Calendar of Events of Interest to the ICMI Community
11. Publications of Interest to the ICMI Community: IACME 50 years
12. Subscribing to ICMI News
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Editorial: The greatest calamity in the history of science
The greatest calamity in the history of science
was the failure of Archimedes to invent
positional notation.
- Carl Friedrich Gauss
Although it has increased in the past 20 years,
the number of mathematicians in the United States
who devote large amounts of time to thinking
about mathematics education below the college
level is rather small. As a consequence, there is
no standard set of activities that define the
occupation. Teacher preparation and professional
development are obvious areas for work, but at my
university, we don't have an education school,
and no courses specifically for training
teachers. So, I have had to figure out for myself
what I might do to improve mathematics education
(besides serving on committees and attending
workshops, of course!).
What I have mainly done is, try to think about
the mathematics of elementary school: what it
involves, and what is needed to develop it
robustly - the kinds of ideas that might go into
writing a set of standards for mathematics
education. I have found this to be a serious
intellectual challenge. It is this challenge that
has kept me thinking about mathematics education.
After reading the book Knowing and Teaching
Elementary Mathematics by Liping Ma, and serving
on the committee that produced Adding It Up, I
had the sense that place value was a topic that
needed more attention in US math instruction. As
part of a series of workshops at the Park City
Mathematics Institute, whose goal was to have
mathematicians attend to and discuss aspects of
the elementary curriculum, I undertook to write
an essay about place value. Accordingly, I
sacrificed a substantial part of a visit to the
wonderful Newton Institute in Cambridge, England,
to produce Taking Place Value Seriously (joint
with Susanna Epp; available online at
http://www.maa.org/pmet/resources/PVHoweEpp-Nov2008.pdf).
(Not to complain too much - I also wrote a
research paper.)
One of biggest surprises of that project was
the realization that there was no standard short
name for the basic building blocks of the decimal
system, the numbers like 2 and 70 and 300 and
4,000, that have only one non-zero digit. Such a
number can be described as a "digit times a power
of 10", but this is rather cumbersome; also, it
assumes the concept of "power of a number", while
one would like to draw student attention to these
numbers before that concept is available.
So I gave them a name. In the first draft of
the essay, I called them "very round number"s.
However, some of my Park City colleagues found
this insufficiently dignified, so the term that
survived to the essay is "single place number".
After writing the essay, I took every
opportunity I had to advocate more attention to
place value in US math education. (I found that
Singapore does a much better job with place
value, which reassured me that I was not crazy to
emphasize it.) But I gradually realized that I
was not communicating what I wanted to, and that
the reason was connected to the lack of a name
for a "digit times a power of 10". Place value in
the US is treated as a vocabulary issue: ones
place, tens place, hundreds place. It is
described procedurally rather than conceptually.
Place value is treated as the rule that tells you
how to read a number, not as the idea of
expressing any number as a sum numbers of a very
special form:"digit times a power of 10".
It is this idea that gives place value notation
its amazing power. Not only can we write very
large numbers efficiently, we can compute with
them by simple algorithms, based on two
fundamental principles:
1) know how compute the sum or product of two
"digit times a power of 10"s (in addition, only
worry about the case when the powers of ten are
the same); and
2) combine the results of 1) using the Rules of Arithmetic.
Because of the particular nature of the special
numbers (they are "digit times a power of 10"s!),
step 1) largely boils down to knowing how to
compute with digits: the addition facts and the
multiplication facts. This small amount of
memorization gives one the potential to do an
infinite number of computations.
But talking about place value procedurally
prevents us from saying this. It takes the focus
away from the nature of the special numbers and
what we are doing with them, and turns it to the
question of how to read numbers. This is of
course very important, but it is only the very
beginning, the first step in understanding the
marvelous conceptual leap that place value
embodies.
So my plea to the mathematics education
community is: let's talk conceptually about place
value, and help teachers think conceptually about
place value. And as an enabling first step, let's
find a short catchy standard name for "digit
times a power of 10"!
Roger Howe, Member-at-large, ICMI-EC, howe at math.yale.edu
------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. ICME-12: 2nd announcement
The LOC has published its 2nd announcement on ICME-12 website.
Please distribute it on local mailing lists and distribution lists.
The 2nd announcement includes in particular
information on accommodation; it is important to
notice that there will be available 900 beds in
university dormitories with prices form 12 to 30
USD per night and a lot of low budget hotels with
prices ranging form 50 to 80 USD per night, all
accessible by subway.
The registration fee is 400 USD if the
registration is made before April 1, 2012.
Starting with ICME-8, a special ICME Solidarity
Fund, built by setting aside some 10% of the
total amount collected through the registration
fees and also some donations, has provided grants
in order to support and increase participation
from less affluent regions of the world to the
ICME congresses. The same will happen with
ICME-12.
There will be Workshop and Sharing Groups
proposed freely by participants that will not
include formal presentations, whose deadline is
the 30th of November 2011.
All information is available on the webpages of ICME-12 and ICMI:
http://www.icme12.org/ and http://www.mathunion.org/icmi/
respectively.
Jaime Carvalho e Silva, Secretary-General of ICMI, jaimecs at mat.uc.pt
------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. ICME-12: Discussion groups deadline extended
DG Proposal Submission Deadline Extended!
The IPC of ICME-12 has determined to prolong the deadline for the proposal
submission of a Discussion Group(DG) until the end of July in order to give
ICME-12 potential participants more chance to submit DG proposals. Date of
proposal acceptance notification is same as August 30, 2011. If you have
any question, please feel free to contact the IPC chair:
sungjcho at snu.ac.kr
Hee-chan Lew, Vice Chair of the LOC and Chair of
the Congress Subcommittee, hclew at knue.ac.kr
------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. ICME-12: Topic Study Groups are sending Call for papers
The Call for papers of the Topic Study Groups
(TSG) for ICME-12 are being announced on the
ICME-12 webpage as they are ready. Go to the
ICME-12 webpage to see which are already there:
http://www.icme12.org/
Almost all of the 37 TSGs have already issued
their Call for Papers that can also be found on
the ICMI website on a special area on the front
page of the ICMI website. All the
other Call for Papers and announcements will be
posted there. Please visit the ICMI
webpage and the ICME-12 webpage to be sure not to
miss this and other important information.
If you want to make a widget to put on your own
webpage publicizing ICME-12 just put this code
into your webpage:
<iframe
src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpages%2FICME-12%2F202025416506764&width=292&colorscheme=light&show_faces=true&border_color&stream=true&header=true&height=427"
scrolling="no" frameborder="0"
style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:292px;
height:427px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>
If you want to modify this, you can go to the page
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box/
and change the parameters there. You should note
that the ICME-12 Facebook URL page is
http://www.facebook.com/pages/ICME-12/202025416506764
You can do a similar thing for ICMI if you note
that the ICMI Facebook URL page is
http://www.facebook.com/pages/ICMI-International-Commission-on-Mathematical-Instruction/146491102081123
If you have trouble building this widget you can contact me.
Jaime Carvalho e Silva, Secretary-General of ICMI, jaimecs at mat.uc.pt
------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. ICMI Digital Library: The first five ICMI Studies are online
Digital versions of the first five ICMI Study
Books, published by Cambridge University Press,
are available to download for free to members of
the ICMI community. You just need to go the
corresponding ICMI webpage and access CUP from
there:
http://www.mathunion.org/icmi/digital-library/icmi-study-volumes/
Each link on the ICMI webpage will take you to
the corresponding CUP page where you can download
the PDF versions of these five Study volumes.
We encourage every member of the ICMI community
to recommend to their libraries the purchase of
the paper version of these volumes. ICMI thanks
Cambridge University Press for this service to
the community.
Jaime Carvalho e Silva, Secretary-General of ICMI, jaimecs at mat.uc.pt
------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. ICMI elections: the Nominating Committee is working
The International Commission on Mathematical
Instruction (ICMI) Nominating Committee was
formed, according to the present procedures for
election, with the purpose of presenting the
slate of nominations for the ICMI Executive
Committee (EC) in preparation for the ICMI
elections done at the ICMI General Assembly (GA).
The Nominating Committee consists of seven
people, each with full voting rights. None of its
members shall be eligible for nomination for the
ICMI EC. The present ICMI Nominating Committee is
chaired by Bernard HODGSON (Canada) and includes
the President of ICMI William (Bill) BARTON (New
Zealand) and the President of IMU Ingrid
DAUBECHIES (USA). Two other members were chosen
at random from nominees of ICMI/IMU member
countries, and they are Shobha MADAN (India) and
Dirk SIERSMA (Netherlands). The other two persons
were chosen by the IMU EC and by the core members
of the ICMI Nominating Committee; they are Jill
ADLER (South Africa) and NGUYEN Chi Thanh
(Vietnam).
This Nominating Committee shall analyze the
proposals sent by the Adhering Organizations and
will produce, by March 2012, a nomination slate,
to be called the "ICMI Nominating Committee
slate". This slate shall consist of a unique
candidate for each of the four ICMI officers
(President, Secretary-General, and two
Vice-Presidents), plus at least seven nominees
for the remaining five members
("Members-at-Large") of the ICMI EC to be
elected. When forming this slate, the ICMI
Nominating Committee is authorized to nominate
any duly qualified person for each position.
Two months prior to the ICMI GA, the
Secretary-General of ICMI will send to the
Adhering Organizations and member representatives
to ICMI the ICMI Nominating Committee slate,
accompanied by a CV for each of the candidates on
the slate, plus a list of all nominations
submitted to the ICMI Nominating Committee in due
time.
From the floor of the General Assembly, delegates
may present additional nominations from the list
of previously proposed candidates that satisfy
some additional conditions that can be found in
the procedures for election.
Jaime Carvalho e Silva, Secretary-General of ICMI, jaimecs at mat.uc.pt
------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. XIII CIAEM - Inter-American Conference on Mathematics Education
The 13th meeting of the the CIAEM/IACME, an ICMI
Affiliated group that includes all countries of
Noth, Central and South America, ended June 30th
with the general satisfaction of all the
participants. More than 1800 math educators,
mathematicians and teachers from 33 countries met
for five days (June 26-30) and could follow 5
plenary talks, 4 plenary round tables (one of
them dedicated to the work of Ubiratan
D'Ambrosio), 30 parallel talks, 6 parallel round
tables, and more than 700 contributed papers.
At the closing session CIAEM/IACME President
Angel Ruiz declared that this Conference was
unforgettable. He was clearly satisfied with the
organization and the high level of the
presentations and discussions. Local organizers
Rute Borba and Carlos Monteiro were congratulated
by the CIAEM/IACME Executive Committee and all
the participants.
In this meeting ICMI Study 18 was launched and an
update of the Klein Project was presented to the
participants.
The CIAEM/IACME General Assembly met during the
meeting and elected the Executive Committee that
will govern from 2011 to 2015. The new Executive
Committee is
President: Angel Ruiz (Costa Rica)
1st Vice-President: Eduardo Mancera (Mexico)
2nd Vice-President: Patrick Scott (United States)
Secretary: Claudia Groenwald (Brazil)
Members-at-large: Tania Campos (Brazil)
Eduardo Bassurto (Mexico)
Hugo Barrantes (Costa Rica)
Gustavo Bermudes (Uruguay)
Jhony Villa (Colombia)
The next CIAEM/IACME meeting will be in Mexico in
the State of Chiapas from the 23rd to the 27th of
June 2015.
Jaime Carvalho e Silva, Secretary-General of ICMI, jaimecs at mat.uc.pt
------------------------------------------------------------------------
8. ICMI book for study 18 was launched
For the first time in its history, ICMI launched
internationally a Study Book and produced a press
release and an Executive Summary.
The book resulting from ICMI Study number 18 was
launched internationally at the CIAEM meeting in
Recife, Brazil.
The Study was organized jointly by ICMI and the
International Association for Statistical
Education (IASE) and the resulting Study Book is
called "Statistics Education in School
Mathematics: Challenges for Teaching and Teacher
Education" and will be available for purchase at
Springer: http://alturl.com/p5sqx
Please be aware that members of the ICMI
community can purchase this and other ICMI Study
books at a substantial discounted price:
http://www.mathunion.org/icmi/publications/icmi-studies-publications/purchasing-niss-volumes/
The presentation of ICMI Study number 18 in
Recife was made by Study co-chair Carmen
Batanero, ICMI past-President Michèle Artigue and
ICMI Secretary-General Jaime Carvalho e Silva. An
Executive Summary of this study was produced; to
get a copy please click here:
http://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/ICMI/files/News/Executive_summary_English_Final.pdf
Translation of this Summary into several
languages was made: German, French, Mandarin,
Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. They are
available clicking here: http://alturl.com/furx7
ICMI encourages that you distribute these
Executive Summaries as widely as possible.
Jaime Carvalho e Silva, Secretary-General of ICMI, jaimecs at mat.uc.pt
------------------------------------------------------------------------
9. International Colloquium - A Hommage to Michèle Artigue
First Announcement -- International Colloquium
The Didactics of Mathematics: Approaches and
Issues.
A Hommage to Michèle Artigue (Professor Emeritus
of the University Paris Diderot, Past President
CIEM/ICMI)
Place: Paris, Dates: May 31 to June 1, 2012,
Languages: French, English, Spanish. Provision
will be made to facilitate the participation of
those expressing themselves in any one of these
three languages.
Motivation: The scientific contribution of
Michèle Artigue is important, both within the
didactics of mathematics in a strict sense as
well as within research strands in the broader
framework of "mathematics education". The
colloquium will relate to current work
representative of the main themes of her
contribution, while also constituting a "memory"
of her contribution to these themes over the last
forty years.
Scientific activities: The conference will
include roundtables, plenary or semi-plenary
lectures, workshops and a session of poster
communications.
Plenary Lectures
The Mathematicians' Viewpoint
Daniel Perrin, Benoît Rittaud (in parallel)
Digital representations of mathematical objects
Chronis Kynigos, Ivy Kidron
International collaborations in mathematics education
Jill Adler, Li Shiqi, Angel Ruiz
Epistemology, history and didactics
Michael Otte, Christine Proust
Round Tables
The Evolution of Theoretical Frameworks in Didactical Research
Marianna Bosch, Maria Alessandra Mariotti, Marie-Jeanne Perrin, Luc Trouche
Theoretical Frameworks in Didactics and Research in «Mathematics Education »
Abraham Arcavi, Paolo Boero, Jeremy Kilpatrick, Luis Radford
The Researcher in the Wider Community
Bill Barton, Celia Hoyles, Jean-Pierre Kahane, Nicolas Saby
Becoming Researchers: The « School » of Michèle Artigue
Poster communications: A call for communications
will be made on October 15, 2011 with the second
announcement, with submission by January 31,
2012. The communications will be related to a
workshop and written in one of the languages of
the conference. Research contributions, but also
other types of experience related to a topic of
the workshop, will be welcome. The second
announcement will specify the objectives of each
workshop and the method of submission.
Scientific Committee co-chairs: Bernard Hodgson
(Quebec), Jean-Baptiste Lagrange (France)
Organising Committee chair: Alain Kuzniak (France)
Organization: The colloquium is organised by the
Laboratoire de Didactique Andre Revuz Université
Paris-Diderot (LDAR), in association with the
IREM chief executive assembly (ADIREM).
Web site http://www.lar.univ-paris-diderot.fr/colloque/artigue
------------------------------------------------------------------------
10. Calendar of Events of Interest to the ICMI Community
PME 35 - CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL GROUP
FOR THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
Ankara, Turkey, July 10-15, 2011
http://www.arber.com.tr/pme35.org/
ICTMA 15: 15th International Conference on the
Teaching of Mathematical Modelling and
Applications
Melbourne, Australia, July 14-19, 2011
http://www.ictma15.edu.au/
FAMA - Family Math for adult learners
international conference: "Family and communities
in and out of the classroom: ways to improve
mathematics' achievement", Barcelona, Spain, July
23, 2011
http://www.mathforlive.net/fama_Conference.php
CIEAEM 63: "Facilitating access and
participation - Mathematical practices inside and
outside the classroom" / "Faciliter l'accès et la
participation - Les pratiques mathématiques à
l'intérieur et à l'extérieur de la classe",
University of Barcelona, Spain, July 24 - July 29, 2011
http://www.cieaem.net/
SEMT 11 - SYMPOSIUM ON ELEMENTARY MATHS TEACHING
Prague, Czech Republic, August 21-26, 2011
http://kmdm.pedf.cuni.cz/Default.aspx?PorZobr=7&PolozkaID=-1&ClanekID=267
16e Ecole d'été de didactique des mathématiques -
Association pour la Recherche en Didactique des
Mathématiques,
Carcassonne (Aude), France, August 21-28, 2011
http://www.ardm.eu/contenu/2011-carcassonne
The Mathematics Education into the 21st Century
Project 11th International Conference, Turning
Dreams into Reality: Transformations and Paradigm
Shifts in Mathematics Education, Rhodes
University, Grahamstown, South Africa, September
11-17, 2011
http://math.unipa.it/%7Egrim/21project.htm
ECER 2011 - European Conference on Educational Research,
Berlin, September 13-16, 2011
http://www.eera-ecer.eu/ecer/ecer-2011-berlin/
ICMI Study 21 Conference
São Paulo, Brazil, September 16-20, 2011
http://www.icmi-21.com/
ATCM 2011 - 16th Asian Technology Conference of
Mathematics, 'Integration of Technology into
Mathematics Education-past, present and future',
Abant Izzet Baysal University, Bolu, Turkey, September 19-23, 2011
http://atcm2011.org/
3rd International Realistic Mathematics Education Conference
The Design and Use of Learning Progressions in Mathematics Education
University of Colorado at Boulder, USA, September 23 - 25, 2011
http://cucs.colorado.edu/confreg/rme2011
MathTED 2011 - the 2011 Biennial Conference of
the Philippine Council of Mathematics Teacher
Educators,
COLUMBAN COLLEGE, Olongapo City, Philippines, October 21-22, 2011
http://mathtedphil.org/conferences.php
ICREM5 - The 5th International Conference on
Research and Education in Mathematics
Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia, October 22-24 2011
http://www.math.itb.ac.id/~icrem5
CARN Conference 2011 (Collaborative Action Research Network)
Bringing a different world into existence
Action research as a trigger for innovations
Vienna, Austria, November 4-6, 2011
http://ius.uni-klu.ac.at/misc/carn/
Volcanic DELTA 2011, Eighth Southern Hemisphere
Conference on the Teaching and Learning of
Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics,
Rotorua, NZ, November 27 - December 2, 2011
http://www.delta2011.co.nz/delta2011/
Creating Balance in an Unjust World Conference on
Math Education and Social Justice
Mission High School in San Francisco, CA, USA, January 13-15, 2012.
http://creatingbalanceconference.org/
Seventh International Conference on Science,
Mathematics & Technology Education:
Transformations through Science, Mathematics and
Technology Education - Towards an Innovative and
Sustainable Society, Muscat, Oman, February
12-15, 2012
d.fisher at smec.curtin.edu.au
EMF 2012 - Espace Mathématique Francophone,
Genève, 3-7 Février 2012
http://www.emf2012.unige.ch/
ICME-12 - Twelfth International Congress on Mathematical Education
Seoul, Korea, July 8-15, 2012
http://www.icme12.org/
HPM 2012 History and Pedagogy of Mathematics
The HPM Satellite Meeting of ICME-12
Daejeon (Korea), July 16-20, 2012
http://www.hpm2012.org
EARCOME6 - The Sixth East Asia Regional Conference on Mathematics Education,
Thailand, March, 2013
------------------------------------------------------------------------
11. Publications of Interest to the ICMI Community: IACME 50 years
The Editorial Board of the Journal of Research
and Training in Mathematics Education and the
board of the Interamerican Committee on
Mathematics Education CIAEM decided to publish a
special series of notebooks designed to
commemorate 50 years of IACME.
We have titled this special series as IACME 50.
This includes 3 issues of the Journal: 7. 8 and
9. In them you will find articles and documents
and central protagonists in the history of CIAEM
at different times, as well as researchers from
Latin America who are starting, more recently, in
the tissues of this new scientific and
professional discipline is built around Teaching
and Learning of Mathematics.
The number 7 in this series consists of two
sections: the History of Early Writings of CIAEM
and Ubiratan D'Ambrosio. The first section
contains articles of intellectuals associated
with the conference and especially people who
devoted much of their effort to the growth of
this discipline in the region: Stone, Fehr,
Santaló, D'Ambrosio, Basque and others, some of
them pleasant memory. The second section includes
three articles written in the 50s of last century
by Ubi D'Ambrosio, a leading figure in the
American region of major influence in the
international community of mathematics education.
The number 8 includes articles on an essential
theme: Media and Hypermedia in Mathematics
Education. Invoked in a very general work on the
participation of technologies, videos, history,
art education in different contexts and different
approaches. There are implicit assumptions in the
selection of these works, as the appreciation of
diversity and integration required of approaches
or instruments involved in the mathematics
classroom chores.
The number 9 includes other relevant
contributions on various aspects of mathematics
education, but revolving around one central issue
which is the training of educators, curriculum,
competencies, evaluation, perception, initial
training, training ... The focus is on a
convergence imbricated about the Teaching of
Mathematics.
http://www.cimm.ucr.ac.cr/ojs/index.php/CIFEM
No. 9 (2011) Curriculum, assessment, teacher training, skills
No. 8 (2011) Media and Hypermedia
No. 7 (2011) History and perspectives. Ubiratan D'Ambrosio: early writings
------------------------------------------------------------------------
12. SUBSCRIBING TO ICMI News
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