The Executive Committee had its fourth meeting at CIRM, Luminy (France), on 21st April and its fifth and final meeting in Saint-Séverin/Saint Marcellin (France) 6-9 November 1998. Beside in meetings, the work of the EC was conducted by correspondence and electronic communication under the direction of the President and the Secretary.
In 1998, it was decided, with the endorsement of the International Mathematical Union, to co-opt Brunei Darussalem a non-IMU member of ICMI in accordance with the terms of reference.
A number of countries have not (yet) appointed National Representatives in ICMI. These are Brunei Darussalem, Georgia, Greece, Mexico, Pakistan, Romania, Slovenia, and Uruguay.
It continued to be part of ICMI's general policy to encourage member states to establish National Sub-Commissions of ICMI. In 1998 Sweden decided to establish a National Sub-Commissions. A brief report about this was included in the ICMI Bulletin, No. 44, June 1998.
The term of the EC 1995-1998 came to an end on the 31st December. It will be succeeded by the 1999-2002 EC as indicated in the ICMI Bulletin No. 45, December 1998. In order to prepare and smoothen the transition process, the outgoing EC has produced a document containing information, advice, and recommendations to the incoming EC. Also the outgoing Secretary, Mogens Niss, and the incoming Secretary, Bernard Hodgson, met and worked in Copenhagen for three days in October to prepare the take-over of the EC responsibility. Finally the outgoing and incoming Presidents and Secretaries will meet in New York in February 1999 to finish the transition. An unofficial and informal meeting of members of the outgoing and the incoming ECs was held in conjunction with the ICMI Study Conference in Singapore in December 1998 (cf. item 3)
A farewell statement by the outgoing President and Secretary of ICMI was published in the December 1998 issue (No. 45) of the ICMI Bulletin.
The next International Congress on Mathematical Education, ICME-9, will be held in Makuhari, Chiba, Japan, in 2000. The dates are 31 July to 7 August. An International Programme Committee was appointed in 1996. It is chaired by Professor Hiroshi Fujita, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan. The list of members was published in the ICMI Bulletin No. 42, June 1997, p. 17. The IPC met for the first time in the beginning of March 1998. The main part of the work of the Committee has been carried out be means of electronic post under the direction of Professor Fujita.
No official bids have been received by the Executive Committee with respect to ICME-10 in 2004. However, at some point the society of mathematics education researchers in one country has indicated to ICMI that it is working to make its country submit a bid to host ICME-10. So far no official bids have been received by any country.
The mounting and conducting of so-called ICMI studies on crucial themes and issues in mathematics education were continued in 1998. The ICMI studies are published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, the Netherlands, under the general editorship of the President and the Secretary of ICMI.
The study volume on Perspectives on the Teaching of Geometry for the 21st Century, the corresponding study conference of which was held at Università di Catania, Italy, September-October 1995, was published in the beginning of 1998, edited by Vinicio Villani and Carmelo Mammana.
The study conference on The Role of the History of Mathematics in the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics was held in France, at CIRM, Luminy (near Marseille), 20-25 April 1998. John Fauvel, the Open University, UK, and Jan van Maanen, the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, are co-chairs of the International Programme Committee, while Jean-Luc Dorier, Grenoble, France, was in charge of the Local Organization. The Discussion Document for this study was published in various journals and newsletters, including the ICMI Bulletin, No. 42, June 1997, pp. 9-16, and in an abbreviated version in L'Enseignement mathématique, 2e Série, t. 43, fasc 1-2, janvier-juin 1997, pp. 199-203. The study volume is expected to appear in 1999/2000.
The study on the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics at University Level took place at the National Institute of Education (Nanyang Technological University), Singapore 1998. The IPC is chaired by Derek Holton, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, while Lime-Teo Suat Khoh, Singapore, was in charge of the Local Organization. The Discussion Document for this study was published in numerous places, including the ICMI Bulletin, No. 43, December 1997, pp. 3-13, and L'Enseignement mathématique, 2e Série, t. 43, fasc. 3-4, juillet-décembre 1997, pp. 381-390. Two publications are expected to result from this study. In addition to the study volume to be included in the ICMI Study Series, expected to appear in 2000/2001, a volume of Selected Papers will be published as a special issue of the International Journal for Mathematical Education in Science and Technology in 2000.
The next study in the series, The Future of the Teaching and Learning of Algebra, was initiated in 1998 by the appointment of an International Programme Committee chaired by Professor Kaye Stacey, University of Melbourne, Australia (the composition of the IPC is given on p. 35 of this Bulletin ). The study conference is planned to take place at the University of Melbourne, Australia, in 2001.
Finally, the EC took the first steps in initiating a further study, A Comparative Study of Mathematics Education in the East and in the West. The corresponding study conference is expected to be held in Hong Kong in 2001.
The First ICMI East Asia Regional Conference on Mathematics Education (ICMI-EARCOME 1), was held in Chungbuk, The Republic of Korea, 17-21 August 1998. Reports have it that the conference was well organised and attended, and successful in both scientific and social terms. It has been decided to organise - under ICMI sponsorship - an ICMI-EARCOME-2 to be held in Singapore in 2002. It has further been decided to grant a meeting of francophone mathematics educators, to be held in Grenoble, France, 2000, status as an ICMI Regional Conference.
ICMI continues to have four affiliated study groups, HPM (The International Study Group for the Relations Between the History and Pedagogy of Mathematics), IOWME (The International Organization of Women and Mathematics Education), and PME (The International Group for the Psychology of Learning Mathematics), and WFNMC (The World Federation of National Mathematical Competitions).
In 1992 ICMI established a Solidarity Programme to help the development of mathematics education in countries in which there is a need for it that justifies international assistance. The first stage in this programme was the mounting of a Solidarity Fund based on private contributions by individuals, associations, etc. The Fund is to be activated to support concrete initiatives and activities that may foster solidarity in mathematics education between well-defined quarters in developed and less developed countries. The Solidarity Fund has received donations from various organizations and individuals in mathematics education for which it is most grateful.
The steering committee for the Solidarity Fund (chaired by Professor Jean-Pierre Kahane, Orsay, France) decided, on the recommendation of the EC, to give a grant of US$ 18.000 to support two collaborative projects on the education and professional development of mathematics teachers in Burkina Faso and Cameroun. The project is supervised by the French Sub-Commission of ICMI in cooperation with the French association for mathematics teachers.
For the first time in many years, there were no specific ICMI lectures, symposium or suchlike at the 1998 International Congress of Mathematician. At ICM-98, in Berlin, Germany, the ICMI-related activities were integrated into the programme of Section 18: Teaching and Popularization of Mathematics. In the final programme, outgoing and incoming ICMI officers (Miguel de Guzmán, Mogens Niss, Bernard Hodgson, and Michèle Artigue) were involved as invited speakers in lectures or panels. The papers given are published in the Proceedings of the congress.
In 1998, ICMI Bulletin Nos. 44 and 45 were published under the editorship of the Secretary of ICMI. Furthermore, the ICMI Bulletin is available in the following electronic forms: In ASCII-format on direct request to the editor. On the World Wide Web, where it can be found under the following coordinates on the IMU-server, through URL:
http://elib.zib.de/imu/icmi/bulletin/
Since the end of 1995, information concerning ICMI can be found on the ICMI-pages of the IMU-server on the World Wide Web. The pages are located through URL:
http://elib.zib.de/imu.icmi
Mogens Niss, Secretary, 12 January 1999
Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark