[ICMI-News] ICMI Newsletter November 2019

[ICMI Administrator]

Please find below the ICMI Newsletter from November 2019.
Please distribute this newsletter in your networks.
Thank you very much!

Best wishes
Ramona

*************

*ICMI Newsletter November 2019*

Editors:
Abraham Arcavi (ICMI Secretary General)
Merrilyn Goos (ICMI Vice President)
Lena Koch (ICMI Administrator)

Contact:
ICMI_Secretary-General at mathunion.org
merrilyn.goos at ul.ie
icmi.administrator at mathunion.org

Graphic design:
Ramona Fischer


CONTENTS
1.    From the desk of Jill Adler, President of the International 
Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI).
2.    ICMI Awardees for 2019 and 2020 – Citations
3.    ICME14
4.    News from the CANP Project: the EIII CEMAS in Asunción and La Paz 
– Michele Artigue (ICMI Past President)
5.    Report on XV CIAEM, Medellin, Colombia – Yuriko Yamamoto Baldin 
(ICMI EC Member-at-Large)
6.    Once upon a time… Historical vignettes from the ICMI Archives: The 
ICMI Logo – Bernard Hodgson, Curator of the ICMI Archives (former ICMI SG)
7.    News in brief
8.    Upcoming Events

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*1. From the desk of Jill Adler, President of the International 
Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI).*

_•    ICMI Awards_

It is with enormous pleasure and happiness that ICMI announces the 
awardees of the 2019 ICMI Felix Klein, the 2019 Hans Freudenthal and the 
2020 Emma Castelnouvo medals.


/Warm congratulations to:/
Professor Emeritus Tommy Dreyfus
Recipient of the ICMI 2019 Felix Klein medal

Professor Gert Schubring
Recipient of the ICMI 2019 Hans Freudenthal medal.

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)
Recipient of the ICMI 2020 Emma Castelnouvo medal.


We take immense pride in being able to identify and honor members of our 
community who have made such significant contributions to ICMI being the 
thriving international mathematics education organization that it is. 
The depth and breadth of their collective work is evident in the 
citations (see below).

The ICMI Executive Committee thanks again the members of the award 
committees (who as you know remain anonymous during their term) and 
their Chairs – Anna Sfard, (Award Committee for the Freudenthal and 
Felix Klein awards) and Konrad Krainer (Award Committee for the Emma 
Castelnouvo award). We are aware of the dedication and time committed to 
carrying out this wonderful, but demanding activity of ICMI.

Professors Dreyfus and Schubring, and a representative of NCTM will be 
presented their medals at ICME14 in Shanghai in July, together with the 
2017 awardees, Professor Deborah Ball (Felix Klein) and Terezhina Nunez 
(Hans Freudenthal).

_•    ICME14_
Our colleagues in Shanghai on the Local Organising Committee and the 
International Program Committee under the leadership of ICME14 Convenor 
Professor Jianpan Wang have been and are hard at work supporting all the 
key activities in the Congress. While the Panels and Survey teams have 
been at work for some time already, it is the Topic Study Group (TSG) 
teams that are currently reviewing all submissions as they put together 
their vision for their TSG at the Congress. We are looking forward to an 
exciting congress, and also to the innovation being introduced of the 
possibility for all participants to present in one TSG and participate 
in a second TSG.
The Solidarity Fund Committee will meet in Shanghai in early January to 
review all applications to the fund, and we hope to continue the 
practice of being able to support many in our community for whom the 
costs of the conference otherwise prohibit their participation. This is 
a reminder to all who seek such support to ensure their applications are 
in on time. The application is available at Second Announcement (see 
https://www.icme14.org/static/en/news/59.html?v=1571120235861 Item 10, 
page 28 for details and instructions of how to apply). Please note:

*The deadline for applying to the Solidarity Fund is December 20th, 2019*

_•    Nominations Committee (NC) for the ICMI Executive Committee (EC) – 
2021-2024_
As the current ICMI Executive Committee (EC) heads towards 2020, its 
final year in office, so there is a committee hard at work, with your 
help through nominations, to develop the slate for the next EC that will 
be elected at the General Assembly (GA) in Shanghai on July 11, 2020. 
Under the leadership of ICMI past president Michèle Artigue as Chair, 
the current Nominations Committee (NC), will conclude its work in time 
to  make the slate available to all Country Representatives a few months 
before the GA.

2019 is the third year in office for the current Executive Committee and 
it has been a most demanding time. ICME preparations heat up, two ICMI 
Studies are working hard to make progress, the ICME15 sites for 2024 
have been explored and decided (as announced in the July 2019 issue of 
this Newsletter) and so on and so on. The travel has been extensive for 
office bearers, but we are supported by a wonderful Executive Committee, 
whom we take all opportunities to thank for their ongoing work for ICMI. 
Part of the travel commitments are also academic work, and such is the 
privilege of my position. I thus share some reflections from my 
participation in the recent third International Conference on 
Mathematics Textbooks- ICTM3).

_•     Reflections_
In September, I had the privilege of attending and delivering a talk at 
the ICMT3 conference in Paderborn, and here I reflect briefly on the 
community of mathematics educators whose work on resources in general 
and textbooks in particular has flourished in the past decade.
In my talk, I listed the extensive intellectual resource base that has 
been collaboratively built by members of this community through special 
issues of key journals, and co-edited and multiple authored books. While 
textual resources clearly extend beyond textbooks, I was still surprised 
by questions to me both prior to and following the conference, questions 
as to whether textbooks were still relevant? And here I assumed the 
question referred to both their use for teaching and learning, and then 
research into the practices that unfold.

The short answer is, yes, and that across the world, and probably for 
the vast majority of those working in mathematics education in school, 
and possibly too University, rely on the expertise condensed into 
textbooks make available to support teaching and learning. As I argued 
in my presentation, the use of any resource, materials, textual or 
socio-cultural (e.g. language, time – see Adler, 2000) and through these 
access to mathematics, depends on their transparency. It cannot be taken 
for granted, that the intentions, both mathematical and pedagogical, 
built into these resources are realized by all who use them. I emphasize 
“all” here, in that what is important to understand is the cultural 
orientations and values with respect again to both mathematics and 
pedagogy that underpin these resources. These are never easily 
accessible to all, given the increasing diversity of civil society 
across countries.It was fascinating to learn from research presented, 
the varying ways in which textbooks and other resources do come to be 
used, by whom and with what effects. Also important, and of course 
somewhat obvious was a focus on the increasing availability and use of 
electronic textbooks, in many parts of the world.  We learned during the 
conference of the different forms these take and the challenges in 
developing informative research on how different forms operate as 
resources for teaching and learning, and whether textbooks in 
mathematics education were indeed levers for educational change.

As we head into 2020, and towards ICME14, we can look forward to ongoing 
developments of such themes in our community. And this brings me back to 
my reflection on language in the previous newsletter. Unlike Medellin, 
where I struggled with Spanish and Portuguese, the languages of the 
conference, this smaller conference took place in English, and it was 
colleagues from, for example, Japan, China and Latin America who despite 
their struggles with English, presented their work in English. As we 
head to Shanghai for ICME14, I hope we all are cognizant and aware of 
how we interact, given the many languages brought into a congress space, 
and the work we all need to do to optimize our opportunities to learn 
with and from each other across our widely different languages, contexts 
and conditions. As I noted in the July newsletter, I look forward to 
discussing language and other substantive issues when our country 
representatives meet in Shanghai for the ICMI General Assembly, just 
prior to ICME14.
 
*2. ICMI Awardees for 2019 and 2020 – Citations*

*The Felix Klein Medal*, with which ICMI honors the most meritorious 
members of the mathematics education community, is given in 2019 to 
*Tommy Dreyfus*, Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University, Israel, in 
recognition of his life-time achievement. This distinction acknowledges 
Professor Dreyfus’s contribution to research as well as his leading role 
in shaping and consolidating the research community and in fostering 
communication between researchers.
For four decades, Tommy Dreyfus’s research has been systematically 
deepening our understanding of mathematics learning. Trained as a 
mathematical physicist, Tommy has been drawing in this work on his deep 
understanding of mathematics and his first-hand familiarity with ways in 
which mathematical ideas come into being and evolve. Since the late 
1970s and for the next two decades his research has been focusing on 
students’ conceptualization of mathematical objects such as function, 
and on the role of intuition, visualization and aesthetics in 
mathematical thinking. With years, his interests have been gradually 
shifting from the individual student to learning-teaching processes of 
the classroom. In the last twenty years, his empirical and conceptual 
work has been devoted to the study of epistemic activities such as 
proving and abstracting. These efforts resulted in the theory known as 
AiC – Abstraction in Context, which he developed with Baruch Schwarz and 
Rina Hershkowitz. Conceived in the late 1990s, the AiC framework has 
become increasingly influential. Since its inception, it has generated 
much empirical research all over the world. The theory has been found to 
be useful also to teachers, whom it provides with tools for monitoring 
student learning. As impressive in its scope, breadth, depth and impact 
as Professor Dreyfus‘s research is, it constitutes only a part of the 
contribution for which he is honored today with this special 
distinction. Another outstanding part of his work is his ongoing project 
of shaping and consolidating the international community of research in 
mathematics education, a goal that he tries to attain in multiple ways. 
First and foremost, through his extensive editorial work he has been 
setting standards and giving directions for research in mathematics 
education. Particularly influential has been his 30-year long 
association with Educational Studies in Mathematics, which included his 
three-year long term as the editor-in-chief. Professor Dreyfus has also 
been serving in, and shaping, numerous professional organizations, with 
PME (the international group for the Psychology of Mathematics 
Education) and ERME (the European Society for Research in Mathematics 
Education) among them.

In addition, he played key roles in numerous professional committees in 
Israel, Europe and America. His influence on research and on policy 
directly affecting mathematics teaching is keenly felt over the world.

In all these activities, Professor Dreyfus has been consistently 
promoting cross-discursive dialogues. He has done this by organizing 
international meetings, establishing trans-continental collaborative 
research projects, appearing world-wide as an invited speaker and by 
extensive mentoring in his own country and beyond. Probably the most 
important and innovative among Professor Dreyfus’s consolidating 
activities have been his multifarious efforts to spur and improve 
communication among researchers working within differing theoretical 
frameworks. Being concerned about the fragmentation of the field of 
mathematics education, Professor Dreyfus has been looking for ways in 
which community members can engage in a productive dialogue across 
discursive boundaries. These attempts began with his own 
cross-theoretical research collaborations. It continued with his 
conceptual work on the possibility of “networking theories”, the 
activity of employing multiple theories in the attempt to produce a 
synergetic, cumulative effect. Through these initiatives, Professor 
Dreyfus has contributed to changing the dominant narratives about 
theoretical diversity. With his help, the multiplicity of research 
discourses is now seen less as a problem to solve than as an opportunity 
to embrace.

Born in Switzerland and now living in Israel, Tommy is fluent in a 
number of languages, which makes him particularly well equipped for the 
project of consolidating the international community. After his 1975 
doctorate in mathematical physics from the University of Geneva, endowed 
with several prestigious fellowships and awards, Tommy began visiting 
universities all over the world. Since then, he never stopped. In 
parallel to his work at the Weizmann Institute and at the Center for 
Technological Education in Holon, and later as a full professor of 
mathematics education at Tel Aviv University, Tommy served as a visiting 
professor in 14 universities over the world, including in Canada, 
Germany, Finland, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and 
the USA. On all these occasions, he spent much time teaching and working 
with both young and seasoned researchers. By all accounts, he left an 
indelible mark in all the places he visited.

This owes, among others, to his ability to communicate fluently and 
easily, to his sensitivity to other cultures and to his general sense of 
inclusiveness. His willingness to listen and to share his own insights 
and his devotion to a common effort of understanding and improving 
mathematics education have touched everyone with whom he has come into 
contact. Officially retired since 2015, he remains as active and engaged 
as ever.
To sum up, over the 40 years of his career, Professor Dreyfus has been 
contributing to our collective endeavor of promoting mathematics 
education in great many ways: as a researcher, as an editor, as an 
organizer and policy adviser, and as a teacher and mentor. So far, he 
has published more than 120 research papers and book chapters, 9 edited 
volumes, and diverse teaching materials. His writings continue to be 
read and cited widely, and research programs he initiated or helped 
establish continue to thrive and inform the field. Even now in his 
retirement, he continues to shape the field, to foster young researchers 
and to influence research and policy, both in his own country and 
abroad. For all this and his many other contributions to our community, 
Tommy Dreyfus is an eminently worthy candidate for the Felix Klein Award.


*The Hans Freudenthal Medal*, with which ICMI honors innovative, 
consistent, highly influential and still on-going programs of research 
in mathematics education, is being awarded in 2019 to Professor *Gert 
Schubring*, a long-time member of the Institut für Didaktik der 
Mathematik at Bielefeld University, Germany, and an extended visiting 
professor at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. This 
award is being granted to Gert Schubring in recognition of his 
outstanding contribution to research on the history of mathematics 
education.

Gert’s research of over four decades has opened new, important avenues 
of research into the phenomenon of mathematics education. Trained as a 
mathematician, Gert has been a member of the Institut für Didaktik der 
Mathematik since 1973, when this interdisciplinary research institute 
for mathematics education was founded. In his doctoral dissertation, 
defended in 1977, Gert wrote on the genetic principle in approaching 
historical research in mathematics. Afterwards, he extended his 
interests, producing wide-ranging writings on the history of mathematics 
education within and across countries, and publishing on the history of 
mathematics.  One of Schubring’s earliest publications came out of the 
symposium, “Comparative Study of the Development of Mathematical 
Education as a Professional Discipline in Different Countries”, 
presented at the Fourth ICME conference in Berkeley in 1980. This set 
the stage for the mathematics education community’s reflection on itself 
as a discipline, and how its own social context had framed its objects 
and methods of study. By inviting us to place ourselves in front of a 
mirror, Gert also sparked interest in the history of earliest efforts in 
mathematics education, including the work of Felix Klein, on which Gert 
has recently published the important book, The Legacy of Felix Klein 
(2019, Springer).

His seminal works have helped to realize the importance of considering 
the social context in the study of the history of mathematics education. 
If this field of research is now well acknowledged, it is in large part 
due to his theoretical and methodological contributions, as well as to 
his leadership in scientific communication.Another, related but 
separate, strand of Gert’s pioneering work was the study of textbooks, 
which he began in his investigations on the evolution of mathematics 
teaching in Latin America. This is yet another area of research that he 
helped to recognize as worth attention. In 2017 he also chaired the 
International Program Committee for the Second International Conference 
on Mathematics Textbook Research and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, 
Brazil.

Schubring has also laid out the formal structures that helped in turning 
the study of the history of mathematics education into an academic 
field. He was the founding co-organiser of International Conference on 
the History of Mathematics Education (ICHME), a forum that since 2009 
has already met six times. After leading the Study Group on the ‘History 
of Teaching and Learning Mathematics’ at the 10th ICME conference in 
2004, Gert became the founding editor of the International Journal for 
the History of Mathematics Education. Gert also co-edited the Handbook 
on the History of Mathematics Education published in 2014, in which he 
contributed to four of the handbook chapters. He is co-editor of the new 
book series International Studies in the History of Mathematics and its 
Teaching, which includes the 2019 volume he edited himself, titled 
Interfaces Between Mathematical Practices and Mathematical Education.
An important aspect of Gert Schubring’s work was his straddling of the 
communities of the history of mathematics and of mathematics education. 
His own book in the former field, Generalization, Rigor and Intuition, 
published in 2005, is a major reference in the history of mathematics 
focused on 17th–19th–century mathematics. Additionally, several 
publications in mathematics education journals (such as For the Learning 
of Mathematics) introduced tools and concepts from the history of 
mathematics, such as methodologies for analyzing historical texts, that 
greatly enrich mathematics education research.
Similarly, Gert brought ideas in mathematics education, such as the 
notion of “mathematics for all” back into the fold of the history of 
mathematics, to examine what kind of knowledge mathematics has been 
taken to be in different cultures and historical periods.
For decades, Gert has been actively promoting the study of the history 
of the field of mathematics education, while simultaneously conducting 
significant historical studies of his own. No other researcher has had a 
greater impact on establishing the social history of mathematics 
education as a dynamic field of scholarly endeavor. His work has not 
only made us aware of the past of mathematics education but has also 
provided important insights into mathematics education as it stands 
today and sets directions for its future. It informs current teaching by 
showing ways in which historical mathematical texts can inspire 
pedagogy. It makes us aware of future possibilities and of the fact that 
they do not have to be merely determined by the past, but rather can be 
moulded by new understandings of past practices, values and ways of 
thinking. All these important contributions make Professor Gert 
Schubring an eminently deserving recipient of the Hans Freudenthal Medal 
for 2019.


ICMI is delighted to announce that the 2020 *Emma Castelnuovo Award for 
Outstanding Achievements in the Practice of Mathematics Education* goes 
to *NCTM – the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (USA and 
Canada)* – in recognition of 100 years of development and implementation 
of exceptionally excellent and influential work in the practice of 
mathematics education.

Founded in 1920, NCTM is the world’s largest mathematics education 
organization, with 40,000 members and more than 230 state, provincial, 
and local affiliate organizations and other affiliates whose scope 
covers the USA and Canada.
The Award Committee found evidence to fulfill all criteria related to 
the Emma Castelnuovo Award. In the following, some exemplary activities 
of NCTM‘s past 30 years are highlighted. These activities fall into a 
wide range of domains – principles and standards as foundations for 
policy and practice, publications including research journals, 
professional development, legislative and policy leadership, and 
international collaboration.
In 1989, NCTM presented Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School 
Mathematics, which turned out to be a highly influential document, not 
only in North America, but all over the world. This document was 
followed by a series of further book-length reports aimed at 
establishing a broad framework to guide reform in school mathematics, 
Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics (1991), Assessment 
Standards for School Mathematics (1995), Principles and Standards for 
School Mathematics (2000), Curriculum Focal Points (2006), Principles to 
Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All (2014) and Catalyzing 
Change in High School Mathematics: Initiating Critical Conversations (2018).
Since its inception in 1920, NCTM has published professional journals 
for teachers of mathematics. Starting with January 2020, a single 
journal Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK-12, published 12 
times a year, will replace what has been for the past 30 years three 
journals. In 1970, NCTM began publishing the Journal for Research in 
Mathematics Education, one of the world’s first journals devoted to this 
subject. These periodic publications are supplemented by an extensive 
publication catalogue for teachers at all levels. Some NCTM publications 
have been translated into other languages, including Arabic, Chinese, 
German, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.
For the professional development of teachers, principals, and other 
stakeholders important for mathematics teaching, NCTM holds an annual 
meeting and exposition along with three regional meetings each year, 
with a combined attendance of about 25,000. In addition, NCTM offers 
multiple professional development activities, professional services, and 
resources via its webpage. NCTM’s Mathematics Education Trust (MET), 
established in 1976, provides funds directly to classroom teachers, 
affiliates, and institutions to enhance mathematics education. MET 
offers 30 grants annually, totaling USD 125,000. In addition, it offers 
scholarships, award programs, and – usually two – annual lifetime 
achievement awards.
NCTM is influentially engaged in constructive policy discussions among 
all stakeholders (in particular in the USA), focusing on improving 
mathematics teaching for all students. This process is supported by the 
NCTM Advocacy Toolkit, a collection of materials which provides NCTM 
members with tools and the guidance they need to advocate for 
mathematics and education.

For spreading NCTM ideas internationally and for establishing contacts 
and collaboration worldwide, NCTM founded the International 
Corresponding Societies, currently with 19 organizations in all 
continents, and has supported several initiatives with educators in 
Latin, Central, and South America.

NCTM’s work has influenced the efforts by teachers, researchers, 
administrators, and other stakeholders to foster excellence in the 
practice of mathematics education. Here are some selected quotations 
from letters supporting NCTM’s nomination for the Emma Castelnuovo Award.

An internationally well-known mathematics educator stresses: “I have 
never lived or worked in the United States, and yet, as a teacher and as 
an academic, I was aware of the work of the NCTM. I drew on their 
resources and publications knowing that I could access a wealth of high 
quality materials developed by expert practitioners in the field. … 
(T)he NCTM Principles and Standards and the Curriculum Focal Points are 
curricular documents that I return to frequently when looking at putting 
together mathematics teacher education courses for pre- and in-service 
teachers in ways that ensure breadth and depth, with inclusion of the 
big ideas in mathematics. I have often passed these documents on to 
students from many parts of the world to use to think about the relative 
emphases and absences in their own national and regional curricula. 
Later, as an academic, I made widespread use of articles published 
across the raft of NCTM journals. … The NCTM has worked tirelessly to 
advocate for high quality mathematical access for all children. ... The 
NCTM is an organization that has succeeded in doing this kind of work at 
a scale that is bigger than any other organization that I can think of.”

An internationally well-known mathematics educator from the USA 
emphasizes, among other considerations, the important role NCTM plays in 
supporting ICMI activities, for example by providing grants to NCTM 
members for attending ICME conferences, and by supporting the writing 
and distribution of documents about mathematics education in the USA 
since ICME-9 in 2000.
Finally, here is the voice of a former mathematics teacher in the USA: 
“NCTM has been an integral part of every stage of my nearly 50-year 
career in mathematics education, from classroom teacher, to school and 
district supervisor, to state mathematics director, to my varied 
leadership efforts that continue at the state, local, national, and 
international levels. … It is clear that the National Council of 
Teachers of Mathematics has been the voice of mathematics education for 
at least these past five decades of my personal involvement. More than 
that, there is no doubt in my mind that the Council has also served as 
the leader within our profession – articulating a shared vision of 
professional mathematics educators, supporting and disseminating 
research behind that vision, and providing resources for the classroom 
and the board room to make that vision a reality. NCTM is absolutely 
indispensable to anyone who cares about or works in any area related to 
mathematics teaching and learning.”

There are many more such quotations that could have been included. It is 
fully evident that NCTM is an outstanding organization that well 
deserves the recognition of the Emma Castelnuovo Award for excellence in 
the practice of mathematics education.

*3. ICME14*

PLEASE CAREFULLY FOLLOW THE NEWS ON AN ONGOING BASIS AT ICME14.ORG

*4. News from the CANP Project – by Michèle Artigue*

Those who regularly read the ICMI Newsletter have already heard about 
the CANP project. It was launched by ICMI in 2010, with the support of 
UNESCO and IMU, for strengthening the educational capacity of all those 
involved in teacher preparation and professional development, creating 
sustained and effective regional networks of teachers, mathematics 
educators and mathematicians, and also linking them to international 
support (see 
https://www.mathunion.org/icmi/activities/developing-countries-support/capacity-networking-project-canp). 
Within one decade, CANP has become a major ICMI-IMU project in 
developing countries.

The CEMAS network (Communidad de Educación Matemática de América del 
Sur) was created during CANP5, which was held in Lima, Peru in February, 
2016, for Andean countries (Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru) and Paraguay. And, 
in September 2019, it organized the first EIII CEMAS (Encuentro 
Internacional de Iniciativas Innovadoras) with the generous support of 
the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) of Paraguay.

As explained in the document presenting these meetings: “the main 
purpose of the EIII is to contribute to the improvement of the quality 
of mathematics education through the exchange of initiatives that 
promote teacher training and educational innovation, and the updating of 
knowledge and skills in teachers”. Their specific objectives are the 
following:
“3.1 To contribute to the articulation of efforts in mathematics 
education at the national and international levels.
3.2. To be a space where specialists and researchers in mathematics 
education can present their initiatives, which should aim at 
strengthening the competences of both pre-service and in-service teachers.
3.3. To promote the link between researchers, institutions and teachers 
in general, so that the exchange of initiatives becomes concrete.
3.4. To provide, during the meetings, specialized updating for teachers 
of the Mathematics Area at all levels of education.
3.5. To contribute to the appreciation of the mathematics teacher as a 
professional with a high level of preparation and a fundamental 
participant in the training of students by dissemination among the main 
means of communication and information channels.” (my translation)

The first EIII CEMAS took place in Asunción (Paraguay) from September 11 
to September 13, 2019. It was jointly organized by the CEMAS, the 
Paraguayan Mathematical Society (SMP), OMAPA (Organización 
Multidisciplinaria de Apoyo a Profesores y Alumnos), with the support of 
ICMI and of the Universidad Comunera del Paraguay where the event took 
place. It gathered more than 200 passionate participants: primary and 
secondary teachers coming from all Paraguayan regions, student teachers, 
teacher educators and researchers in mathematics education and in 
mathematics. The three days, perfectly organized, offered a very rich 
and intense program combining eight plenary lectures covering both 
general themes and the presentation and analysis of specific innovative 
and research projects, most of them carried out in the region, and four 
1h45 slots for parallel sessions proposing workshops on diverse topics. 
The event concluded with a round table where participants discussed 
regional problems with the international experts invited. In fact, among 
the 20 presenters, 7 were from Paraguay, 9 from Peru, Ecuador and Chile, 
and four from Brazil, France, Mexico and USA. Unfortunately, Angel Ruiz 
from Costa Rica, past vice-president of ICMI and organizer of CANP 2, 
and Beatriz Macedo from Uruguay who had supported the launching of CANP 
when she was working at UNESCO, could not attend. This was also the case 
for Yuriko Baldin Yamamoto, who has been the ICMI liaison officer for 
CANP 5 and accompanied the CEMAS network since 2016.

This first realization of EIII in Asunción gave the perfect image of 
what is made possible when, at the national level, there is a real 
synergy between communities, and when this synergy also benefits from 
regional and international support. Moreover, the communicative energy 
of Gabriela Gómez Pasquali, the Paraguayan representative of CEMAS and 
main organizer, was certainly decisive for the success of this event. An 
emotional moment for me occurred at the closing ceremony when Gabriela 
asked participants, category by category, region by region, to stand up, 
making clear the outreach of this event, and also when one teacher went 
to the stage to express his personal feeling about the event. He did so 
in Guarani.  I did not understand a word, but when he finished, Gabriela 
asked who had understood his discourse and all Paraguayan participants 
raised their hands!

When this first EIII CEMAS ended, some of the international presenters 
(Carlos Sabino and Augusta Osorio Gonzales from Peru, Freddy Rivadeneira 
Loor from Ecuador, Patrick Scott from the USA, and I) went to La Paz, 
Bolivia where a second realization of EIII was planned from September 16 
to September 18 at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés with the support 
of the Faculdad de Ingeniería y de Ciencias Puras y Naturales – Carrera 
de Matemática, la Olimpiada Matemática Boliviana, ICMI and the French 
Embassy. This second realization was quite different as, despite the 
many contacts taken with regional authorities by Sonia Cordero, the 
CEMAS Bolivian member in charge of the organization, we discovered that 
very few participants had registered (39), and not all of them were able 
to attend all sessions as they had not obtained the authorization from 
their administration - the event was to place during their teaching 
time. The schedule was reorganized, reducing the number of parallel 
workshops, and moving the plenary lectures to the afternoon to encourage 
better attendance. This resulted in a reduction in the number of 
contributions, especially to the detriment of those prepared by Bolivian 
colleagues. Despite these difficulties, this event made it possible to 
identify a group of very motivated teachers ready to contribute to the 
CEMAS network which obviously needs to be reinforced in Bolivia. It is 
also planned to present CEMAS activities and some workshops prepared by 
Bolivian colleagues at the congress organized by the Bolivian 
Mathematics Society, next November. In this problematic situation, I 
could also measure the commitment of the CEMAS members coming from other 
countries, including Patrick Scott, and their desire to offer support, 
to reinforce exchanges and collaborations, to find practical solutions, 
showing that the CEMAS community does exist and has a future.

*5. Report on XV CIAEM, Medellin, Colombia – Yuriko Yamamoto Baldin *

In the July 2019 issue of the ICMI Newsletter, the president of ICMI, 
Jill Adler, reported on the ICMI Executive Committee meeting that took 
place in Montevideo, Uruguay, and was hosted generously by the 
Mathematical Education Society of Uruguay, whose annual national 
conference followed immediately after the EC meeting. ICMI 
Vice-Presidents Merrilyn Goos and Luis Radford, and Secretary-General 
Abraham Arcavi gave, respectively, the opening plenary lecture, plenary 
talks and workshops in this National Conference on Mathematics Education.

Jill acknowledged the tradition of ICMI supporting local communities and 
gaining knowledge through interactions with local colleagues. She 
referred to this again in her subsequent report on the XV CIAEM that 
followed the Montevideo Meeting, from May 5 to 10, in Medellín, Colombia 
– still in the Latin American community – hosted by the University of 
Medellín and the University of Antioquia. The CIAEM is the most 
important conference on mathematical education of the Americas, founded 
in 1961 by IACME – Inter American Committee on Mathematical Education as 
an affiliated organization to ICMI (www.ciaem-iacme.org). The CIAEM is 
organized every four years, and the XV CIAEM had the participation of 25 
countries from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, with 700 
participants including hundreds of school teachers from the local 
community. The official languages of the conference were Spanish and 
Portuguese.

The important reflection made by Jill in the last ICMI Newsletter 
referred to the direct interaction with the local community and their 
works as “an experience not possible through reading about them or 
interacting in an international conference”. Such reflection highlights 
the issue of language in developing effective communication as one topic 
of discussion for ICMI activities. My own impression of the XV CIAEM is 
about how the invited speakers worked on communicating with the 
conference delegates. None of these plenary speakers was from 
Spanish-Portuguese speaking countries: Jill (ICMI president) is from 
South Africa, Ferdinando Arzarello (former ICMI president) is from 
Italy, and Yoshinori Shimizu (co-chair of ICMI Study 24) is from Japan. 
Ferdinando delivered his lecture in Spanish, whereas assistance in the 
form of simultaneous translations by Patrick Scott (for Jill) and by 
Yuriko (for Yoshi) was key to the success in communicating the essence 
of their talks. In addition, sessions offering a “Dialogue with the 
plenary speaker” were an important activity in the scientific program 
that allowed the audience to interact directly with the invited 
lecturers, thus supplementing the translation of their talks.
Around 400 papers were presented: in plenary and parallel sessions, 
plenary tables, mini-courses, thematic sessions, short communications, 
workshops and posters. Some 50 senior personalities in the international 
mathematical education community presented their research. During the 
event, the Luis Santaló Medal was awarded to Salvador Llinares (Spain) 
and the Marshall Stone Medal to Hugo Barrantes (Costa Rica) and José 
Chamoso (Spain). In the words of Ángel Ruiz, the president of CIAEM and 
former ICMI Vice-President, “the XV CIAEM once again showed that this 
congress is the reference of the highest scientific level and 
intellectual impact in the Mathematical Education of the Americas.” The 
next CIAEM will take place in Lima, Peru, from July 30 to August 4, 2023.

*6. Once upon a time… Historical vignettes from the ICMI Archives: The 
ICMI Logo - Bernard Hodgson, Curator of the ICMI Archive *
It would be most common nowadays for an organization like ICMI to 
promptly adopt a logo in order to facilitate its visual identification.  
But such was not the custom when ICMI was established.  As a matter of 
fact, it is only in the early twenty-first century, almost a hundred 
years after its inception, that ICMI officially adopted a logo—a few 
years before its mother organisation, the International Mathematical 
Union, would itself choose a logo.

It may be worth mentioning at the outset that the International 
Congresses on Mathematical Education (ICMEs), a major strand of the ICMI 
activities since 1969, soon developed the tradition of adopting a logo 
for each of these events.  But that will be a topic for another vignette.

The existence (or absence) of a logo is reflected in particular in the 
letterhead used in the official correspondence of ICMI officers.  For 
instance, most of the letters which circulated amongst the IMU and ICMI 
presidents and secretaries during the presidency of Hans Freudenthal 
(1967-1970) would be either without any letterhead at all, or using the 
official stationery of the academic institution to which the sender was 
attached.  Here is an example from a letter of Freudenthal to the IMU 
Secretary.

An interesting case is seen in documents from André Delessert, ICMI 
Secretary for two terms (1963-1970).

One can see that in this letterhead ICMI has become “ICMT”, the “T” most 
likely arising from the translation to “teaching” of the word 
“enseignement”, from the traditional name of ICMI in French shown 
therein—information about the various names originally used in French, 
German and English to refer to the body now called ICMI can be found in 
Furinghetti [3, p. 2].

Various letterheads were developed from one ICMI Executive Committee 
(EC) to the other.  Here is a nice sample of letterhead, used during the 
two terms (1983-1990) when Jean-Pierre Kahane and Geoffrey Howson were 
respectively President and Secretary—with a special twist in the design 
for the acronym ICMI.

Underneath this heading were listed the names and professional addresses 
of the four ICMI officers (President, Vice-Presidents and Secretary)—in 
those days of course without any email contact!

When I started my first term on the ICMI EC, in 1999, the practice was 
still for the secretary to cobble up in a similar vein with a word 
processor a (hopefully decent) “homemade” letterhead.  But that practice 
was soon to change, as that EC was promptly led in a direction that 
unquestionably required the adoption of a logo: the creation of the 
first two ICMI Awards, formally decided by the ICMI EC at its 2000 
meeting.  The inaugural set of awardees were announced in 2003 and 
presented during the opening ceremony of the ICME-10 congress in 2004.  
As the main tangible tokens for the awards consist of a medal and a 
certificate, it was seen as essential to represent ICMI via a logo on 
these artefacts. The ICMI logo was finally adopted by the EC early in 
2004 ([5]).

Following various calls for comments and suggestions about a “concept” 
for the logo of ICMI, more than 35 proposals had been received by the 
EC, heading in very diverse directions.  It was far from easy for the 
members of the ICMI EC to reach a conclusion. Among the criteria for the 
final decision were issues of simplicity and efficiency of the design, 
as well as flexibility for the use of the logo in varied contexts 
(medals, letterhead, posters, book covers, website, etc.).

The ICMI logo was designed by two students from the School of visual 
arts of Université Laval (Québec, Canada).  The basic structure of the 
logo is a (blue) square, a simple geometrical object which is one of the 
very first shapes met by a child, explain the designers, and also a 
structure conveying stability, solidity and support.  The letters I, C, 
M, I, integrated into the logo so as to facilitate recognition, are 
represented through (white) simple forms introducing freshness, rhythm 
and movement, and recalling basic mathematical symbols.  The apertures 
created by the letters in the border of the figure reinforce its 
dynamics and suggest outreach commitment.  (More comments on the logo 
can be found in [6].)

Since its introduction 15 years ago, the ICMI logo has been used in many 
contexts, sometimes with small variations, for instance in the 
colors—but the blue and white combination is the “official” one.  Here 
is an example of its use on a business card from the time of the 
presidency of Michèle Artigue (2007-2009), her personalized stationery 
being set up similarly with part of the information appearing at the top 
of the page and part at the bottom, as on the card.

/Sources/
[1]  Freudenthal, H. (1967). Letter to Otto Frostman, IMU Secretary, 20 
December. IMU Archive, Box 14B—International Commission on Mathematical 
Instruction, 1967-1980.
[2]  Delessert, A. (1969). Letter to Otto Frostman, IMU Secretary, 22 
March. IMU Archive, Box 14B—International Commission on Mathematical 
Instruction, 1967-1980.
[3]  Furinghetti, F. (2019). Challenges, hopes, actions and tensions in 
the early years of the International Commission on the Teaching of 
Mathematics. In A. Karp (Ed.), National Subcommissions of ICMI and their 
Role in the Reform of Mathematics Education (pp. 1-34). Cham, 
Switzerland: Springer.
[4]  Howson, G. (1984). Letter to Olli Lehto, IMU Secretary, 8 May. IMU 
Archive, Box 14D—International Commission on Mathematical Instruction, 
1983-1985.
[5]  Hodgson, B.R. (2004). A logo for ICMI. ICMI Bulletin 54, 5. 
[www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/ICMI/files/Publications/ICMI_bulletin/54.pdf]
[6]  Hodgson, B.R. (2004). About the ICMI logo. ICMI Bulletin 55, 16-17. 
[www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/ICMI/files/Publications/ICMI_bulletin/55.pdf]

*7. News in brief*
•    The ICMI Study 25 conference on “Teachers of Mathematics Working 
and Learning in Collaborative Groups” will be held in Lisbon, Portugal 
on February 3-7, 2020. See http://icmistudy25.ie.ulisboa.pt/
•    The study volume for ICMI Study 24 on “School Mathematics 
Curriculum Reforms: Challenges, Changes and Opportunities” is in 
preparation. The aim is to present the volume at ICME14.
•    The ICMI Nomination Committee is in the latest stages of its work. 
The slate from which the next Executive Committee will be elected by the 
Country Representatives at the General Assembly (July 12, 2020, 
Shanghai) will be made public in May 2020.

*8. Upcoming Events*
•    ICMI Study 25: Teachers of Mathematics Working and Learning in 
Collaborative Groups to be held in Lisbon, Portugal, February 3-7, 2020. 
http://icmistudy25.ie.ulisboa.pt/
•    14th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME14), 
from July 12 to 19, 2020, Shanghai, China, 
http://www.icme14.org/static/en/index.html
•    ICME15 will take place in Sydney, Australia on July 7-14, 2024.

*SUBSCRIBING TO ICMI NEWS*

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In both cases you will get an e-mail to confirm your subscription so 
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All previous issues can be seen at:
https://www.mathunion.org/pipermail/icmi-news/

The Newsletter in PDF starting from July 2014 can be found here: 
https://www.mathunion.org/icmi/publications/icmi-newsletter/icmi-newsletter-archive-starting-july-2014 
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