This open access book discusses several didactic traditions in mathematics education in countries across Europe, including France, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, the Czech and Slovakian Republics, and the Scandinavian states. It shows that while they all share common features both in the practice of learning and teaching at school and in research and development, they each have special features due to specific historical and cultural developments. The book also presents interesting historical facts about these didactic traditions, the theories and examples developed in these countries.
This open access book, inspired by the ICME 13 Thematic Afternoon on “European Didactic Traditions”, takes readers on a journey with mathematics education researchers, developers and educators in eighteen countries, who reflect on their experiences with Realistic Mathematics Education (RME), the domain-specific instruction theory for mathematics education developed in the Netherlands since the late 1960s. Authors from outside the Netherlands discuss what aspects of RME appeal to them, their criticisms of RME and their past and current RME-based projects. It is clear that a particular approach to mathematics education cannot simply be transplanted to another country. As such, in eighteen chapters the authors describe how they have adapted RME to their individual circumstances and view on mathematics education, and tell their personal stories about how RME has influenced their thinking on mathematics education.
There is great diversity in teacher education systems and approaches to learning and teaching practice across Europe, even though the practical everyday problems of the various national education systems may be very similar. Against this background, in the field of research on didactics, learning and teaching it is important to overcome fragmentation and to find common ground. In this book the editors demonstrate how far we have come over recent years in advancing research in the field which has the ultimate aim of improving learning and teaching. The editors recognise the diverging national and local practices as a starting point in searching for common ground and in creating shared understandings. The book is organised in six parts with 26 chapters in which the authors examine whether there is a paradigmatic shift from teaching to learning, take a closer look at various teacher education models and their empirical basis, discuss the importance of subject didactics, curriculum work and lesson planning, and analyse the impact of Information and Communication Technologies on didactical design. Finally, they relate the empirical findings to theory construction and offer proposals to further advance this vital field by increasing levels of international co-operation.
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. The book presents the Proceedings of the 13th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-13) and is based on the presentations given at the 13th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-13). ICME-13 took place from 24th- 31st July 2016 at the University of Hamburg in Hamburg (Germany). The congress was hosted by the Society of Didactics of Mathematics (Gesellschaft für Didaktik der Mathematik - GDM) and took place under the auspices of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI). ICME-13 brought together about 3.500 mathematics educators from 105 countries, additionally 250 teachers from German speaking countries met for specific activities. Directly before the congress activities were offered for 450 Early Career Researchers. The proceedings give a comprehensive overview on the current state-of-the-art of the discussions on mathematics education and display the breadth and deepness of current research on mathematical teaching-and-learning processes. The book introduces the major activities of ICME-13, namely articles from the four plenary lecturers and two plenary panels, articles from the five ICMI awardees, reports from six national presentations, three reports from the thematic afternoon devoted to specific features of ICME-13. Furthermore, the proceedings contain descriptions of the 54 Topic Study Groups, which formed the heart of the congress and reports from 29 Discussion Groups and 31 Workshops. The additional important activities of ICME-13, namely papers from the invited lecturers, will be presented in the second volume of the proceedings.
The idea of the ICMI Study 13 is outlined as follows: Education in any social environment is influenced in many ways by the traditions of these environments. This study brings together leading experts to research and report on mathematics education in a global context. Mathematics education faces a split phenomenon of difference and correspondence. A study attempting a comparison between mathematics education in different traditions will be helpful to understanding this phenomenon.
MasterClass in Mathematics Education provides accessible links between theory and practice and encourages readers to reflect on their own understanding of their teaching context. Each chapter, written by an internationally respected authority, explores the key concepts within the selected area of the field, drawing directly on published research to encourage readers to reflect on the content, ideas and ongoing debates. Using international case studies, each chapter will encourage readers to think about ways that the teaching and learning of mathematics reflect different cultural traditions and expectations and enable them to evaluate effective strategies for their own contexts.
Didactics of Mathematics as a Scientific Discipline describes the state of the art in a new branch of science. Starting from a general perspective on the didactics of mathematics, the 30 original contributions to the book, drawn from 10 different countries, go on to identify certain subdisciplines and suggest an overall structure or `topology' of the field. The book is divided into eight sections: (1) Preparing Mathematics for Students; (2) Teacher Education and Research on Teaching; (3) Interaction in the Classroom; (4) Technology and Mathematics Education; (5) Psychology of Mathematical Thinking; (6) Differential Didactics; (7) History and Epistemology of Mathematics and Mathematics Education; (8) Cultural Framing of Teaching and Learning Mathematics. Didactics of Mathematics as a Scientific Discipline is required reading for all researchers into the didactics of mathematics, and contains surveys and a variety of stimulating reflections which make it extremely useful for mathematics educators and teacher trainers interested in the theory of their practice. Future and practising teachers of mathematics will find much to interest them in relation to their daily work, especially as it relates to the teaching of different age groups and ability ranges. The book is also recommended to researchers in neighbouring disciplines, such as mathematics itself, general education, educational psychology and cognitive science.
This work reports the findings of the Professional Competence of Teachers, Cognitively Activating Instruction, and Development of Students ́ Mathematical Literacy project (COACTIV). COACTIV applies a broad, innovative conceptualization of teacher competence to examine how mathematics teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, motivational orientations, and self-regulation skills influence their instructional practice and teaching outcomes In this project data was collected on various aspects of teacher competence and classroom instruction from the perspective of both the teachers themselves and their students. Moreover, it gauges the effects of these teacher characteristics on student learning, as indexed by the progress students in each class. Questions addressed in the study which are reported in this volume include: What are the characteristics of successful teaching? What distinguishes teachers who succeed in their profession? How can the quality of instruction be improved?
In the last thirty years or so, the need to address the challenges of teaching and learning mathematics at university level has become increasingly appreciated by university mathematics teachers, and beyond, by educational institutions around the world. Indeed, mathematics is both a condition and an obstacle to success for students in many educational programmes vital to the 21st century knowledge society, for example in pure and applied mathematics, engineering, natural sciences, technology, economics, finance, management and so on. This breadth of impact of mathematics implies the urgency of developing research in university mathematics education, and of sharing results of this research widely. This book provides a bespoke opportunity for an international audience of researchers in didactics of mathematics, mathematicians and any teacher or researcher with an interest in this area to be informed about state-of-the-art developments and to heed future research agendas. This book emerged from the activities of the research project INDRUM (acronym for International Network for Didactic Research in University Mathematics), which aims to contribute to the development of research in didactics of mathematics at all levels of tertiary education, with a particular concern for the development of early-career researchers in the field and for dialogue with university mathematicians. The aim of the book is to provide a deep synthesis of the research field as it appears through two INDRUM conferences organised in 2016 and 2018. It is an original contribution which highlights key research perspectives, addresses seminal theoretical and methodological issues and reports substantial results concerning the teaching and learning of mathematics at university level, including the teaching and learning of specific topics in advanced mathematics across a wide range of university programmes.
