The ICMI Representative for Türkiye is nominated by the Turkish Mathematical Society (TMD), founded in 1948 and the country's IMU Adhering Organization.
TMD also supports mathematics education through the annual National Mathematics Symposium, distinguished lecture series, graduate workshops and summer schools, undergraduate scholarship programs, and the popular-science magazine Matematik Dünyası. TMD has been a full member of the IMU since 1960 and also represents Türkiye in the European Mathematical Society (EMS) and the Mathematical Society of South-Eastern Europe (MASSEE).
The Mathematics Education Society (TMED), founded in 2012, is Türkiye's principal association dedicated specifically to mathematics education. It organizes the biennial International Turkish Computer and Mathematics Education Symposium (TÜRKBİLMAT) and the Mathematics Teaching Best Practices Congress, connecting researchers, teacher educators and teachers around research-informed practice.
The Mathematics Education Development Network (MEGA), founded in 2025, is an association connecting academics and teachers through workshops, seminars and continuing professional development for mathematics teachers, alongside enrichment programs for students and parents. It organizes two biennial, alternating events: the MEGA Forum (first held in 2026) and the MEGA Congress (inaugural edition in 2027).
The biennial National Congress on Science and Mathematics Education (UFBMEK) is a further major national forum for mathematics education research, bringing together researchers, teacher educators, teachers and graduate students.
Graduate research in mathematics education is carried out mainly within the Institutes of Educational Sciences (or, more recently, Institutes of Graduate Education) of universities, where the field is organized as a subfield of Mathematics and Science Education departments. These graduate programs are distributed across the country, and a considerable number of universities offer both master's and doctoral degrees in mathematics education. Following the 1997 restructuring of the faculties of education, a large number of academics were also sent abroad for master's and doctoral study under Law No. 1416 (the YLSY scheme); together with graduates of these domestic programs, they have made a substantial contribution to the development of these institutes and, more broadly, of mathematics education in Türkiye at both the national and international level. Many doctoral graduates are practicing teachers who pursue a PhD alongside their teaching careers, sustaining a close and ongoing link between research and classroom practice.
A distinct body of specialized mathematics education journals has not yet developed in Türkiye. Mathematics education research is regularly published at the national level within the country's very large number of general education journals, most of them run by university faculties of education.
Mathematics teachers are trained through four-year undergraduate programs in faculties of education. Candidates are admitted to elementary or secondary mathematics teacher education programs through a centralized national placement system, and during their studies they develop mathematical content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge alongside a supervised teaching practicum in schools affiliated with the Ministry of National Education (MoNE).
Teacher recruitment has undergone significant reform. Entry to public-school posts was governed mainly by the Public Personnel Selection Examination (KPSS), which included a subject-specific field test (ÖABT) for branches such as mathematics. In 2025, this pathway was replaced by the National Education Academy (Millî Eğitim Akademisi), meaning that candidates must sit an entrance examination combining the same subject-specific field test (ÖABT) with an additional general aptitude and education-knowledge component (AGS), then complete a structured preparatory program combining coursework with roughly 480 hours of school-based practice before permanent appointment — replacing a single written exam with an extended, practice-based preparation pathway.
This recruitment reform builds on the Teaching Profession Law, which entered into force in October 2024 — several months before the Academy's launch — and which for the first time established teaching as a formal career profession structured around three ranks (teacher, specialist teacher, lead teacher), with advancement linked to in-service training and graduate study (holders of a master's or doctoral degree may be exempted from the corresponding promotion exam). Together, the Law's new career structure and the Academy's practice-based entry pathway represented the most significant change to teacher preparation and career progression in Türkiye for many years; their effects on the quality of teacher preparation have yet to be established.
Mathematics education is centrally regulated by the Ministry of National Education across twelve years of compulsory schooling (Grades 1–4, 5–8, 9–12), with free, curriculum-aligned textbooks provided nationwide. The curriculum has been revised repeatedly since national education was centralized in 1924, with major revisions in 1936, 1948, 1962, 1968, 1982, 1993 and 1998, each reflecting the social, political and economic conditions of its time. More recent turning points were the constructivist, student-centered reform of 2004–05 and further revisions in 2013 and 2018, increasingly shaped by Türkiye's PISA and TIMSS results and by the broader international shift toward skills-based curricula.
This trajectory culminated in the Türkiye Century of Education Model (Türkiye Yüzyılı Maarif Modeli, TYMM), introduced from the 2024–25 school year in Grades 1, 5 and 9 and phased in progressively across all grade levels.
Earlier curricula emphasized fixed knowledge to be transmitted; TYMM instead defines every learning outcome as a skill enacted through a sequence of process components. Mathematics learning outcomes draw on five mathematics domain skills — mathematical reasoning, mathematical problem solving, mathematical representation, working with data and decision-making based on data, and working with mathematical tools and technology — together with the curriculum's broader conceptual-skills framework, which also underpins learning outcomes across other subjects. Content is reorganized around broad mathematical themes spanning grade levels: functional thinking appears earlier, algebra is built around families of reference functions, statistics develops through a continuous statistical investigation cycle, geometry emphasizes construction, reasoning and proof, and algorithmic thinking is introduced from primary school onward. Differentiation (enrichment and support) is built systematically into every theme, alongside a stronger emphasis on formative assessment. Theoretically the reform aligns Türkiye with the broader international shift toward skill-based mathematics curricula; in practice it requires substantial change in teaching materials, assessment, and teacher preparation.
The reform also redefines the roles of students and teachers. Students are expected to take an active role in constructing their own mathematical understanding by exploring relationships, formulating and justifying conjectures, and communicating mathematical ideas. Teachers are expected to act as facilitators who activate prior knowledge, connect new learning to previous learning, and structure lessons around multiple representations, collaborative work, real-world contexts and digital technologies. Supporting students' social-emotional, literacy and dispositional development is, in turn, one of TYMM's shared cross-curricular components, addressed consistently across all subjects.
Curriculum documents:
• Mathematics Curriculum, Grades 1–4
• Mathematics Curriculum, Grades 5–8
• Mathematics Curriculum, Grades 9–12
• Türkiye Century of Education Model (TYMM) portal
Progression between school levels is shaped by two centrally administered, multiple-choice examinations: the High School Transition System (LGS) at the end of Grade 8, and the Higher Education Institutions Examination (YKS) for university admission. Both sustain an extensive test-preparation culture and are widely reported to exert pressure toward exam-focused teaching in the grades preceding them.