A letter to the Member of Community of Research in Mathematics Education from ICMI Awards Committee

Dear Colleague,

This is to urge you to consider nominating a candidate for any of the following ICMI Awards: Klein Award, to be granted for a lifetime achievement in mathematics education; Freudenthal Award for major cumulative program of research; and Castelnuovo Award to be given in recognition of outstanding achievements in the practice of mathematics education. To make it possible, we hereby declare extension of the deadline: all the nominations are to be submitted by 31 May 2019.
We now urge you to use this opportunity for honoring those of your colleagues who, in your opinion, deserve any of these Awards, which constitute the highest form of recognition this community can give to its members.

When you acknowledge in this way some central contribution to our collective attempts to understand and improve mathematics education, you do much more than rewarding those who deserve the recognition. Nominating a candidate is also, perhaps above all, an act of building our collective identity and, as such, it contributes to the professional identities of its members.

You may wonder how many deserving candidates are left unawarded after the past rounds. As chairs of the Awards Committees we may assure you: many highly deserving colleagues are still waiting to be recognized. Indeed, numerous impressive nominations were made in the past, but only a few nominees could be actually awarded. We expect past nominees to reappear among the 2019/2020 Awards candidates. In this context, let us alert you to the fact that resubmission is not automatic. No name will be considered without being accompanied by a fresh nomination, made specifically for the 2019/2020 round of awards. We hope to see many of the past candidates nominated again. True, preparing the necessary documents does require some work, but in the case of re-submission, an update of the file from a previous rounds (and mainly of the nominee’s CV) is all that needs to be done.

Hoping to be in touch with you soon again,

Anna Sfard, on behalf of Klein and Freudenthal Awards Committee
Konrad Krainer, on behalf of Castelnuovo Award Committee

The Emma Castelnuovo Award recognizes outstanding achievements in the practice of mathematics education in order to reflect a main aspect of the ICMI 'essence' not previously recognized in the form of an award. The award was named after Emma Castelnuovo, an Italian mathematics educator born in 1913, in celebration of her 100th birthday and honoring her pioneer work. The first Emma Castelnuovo medal was awarded to Hugh Burkhardt and Malcolm Swan in 2016 during the 13th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-13) in Hamburg, Germany.

The Emma Castelnuovo Award for outstanding achievements in the practice of mathematics education honors persons, groups, projects, institutions or organizations engaged in the development and implementation of exceptionally excellent and influential work in the practice of mathematics education, such as: classroom teaching, curriculum development, instructional design (of materials or pedagogical models), teacher education programs and/or field projects with a demonstrated influence on schools, districts, regions or countries.

The Emma Castelnuovo Award seeks to recognize and to encourage efforts, ideas and their successful implementation in the field, as well as to showcase models and exemplars of inspirational practices from which to learn. The recipient of the award will be announced late in 2019 or early in 2020, and the award will be conferred at ICME-14 in July 2020 in Shanghai, China. The awardee (or its representative in the case of a group, institution, project, or organization) will be invited to present a special lecture at the Congress. The Emma Castelnuovo Award Committee consists of a Chair (Professor Konrad Krainer) nominated by the President of ICMI, and five other members who remain anonymous until their terms have come to an end.

The six members come from six different countries, representing different continents (Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America). The Committee is completely autonomous, its work and records will be kept internal and confidential, except for the obvious process of soliciting advice and information from the professional community, which is done by the Committee Chair. The Committee is at this time entering the 2020 cycle of selecting awardees and welcomes nominations for the award from persons, groups, projects, institutions or organizations in the mathematics education community.

For information about the other ICMI awards and the names of past awardees, see the ICMI Awards webpage.

Nominees for the award will be evaluated in light of the following criteria:

• the educational rationale for the candidate's work and what served as a catalyst for that work;
• the problems addressed by the candidate;
• the candidate's role in addressing the problems, whether they involve curriculum development, teacher education, professional development, design of ins
• truction, or other areas of mathematics education practice;
• the conditions under which the work has taken place (the cultural and political context, infrastructure, funding, and people involved);
• the originality and creativity involved in how the candidate has addressed problems and overcome obstacles;
• the quality of networking with other key stakeholders (e.g., bridging theory and practice);
• external or internal evaluations of the work, if available;
• the extent of the influence of the work on educational practice, including quantitative or qualitative evidence of that influence; and
• the potential of the work to serve as a model (either for inspiring others addressing similar problems or because of taking an approach that could be applied elsewhere with appropriate modifications).

Nominations for the Emma Castelnuovo Award should include the following documents in the English language (exceptions for 4. - see below):

1. a document (max. 5 pages) describing the nominee's program and reasons for the nomination (including the nominee's impact on the field);
2. a one-page summary statement;
3. an account of the genesis and dissemination of the nominee's work and the roles of the people involved, with brief curricula vitae of the key persons (max. 10 pages);
4. electronic copies of three publications that reflect the nominee's work related to the practice of mathematics education (e.g., journal articles, textbooks, other instructional materials, or CD-ROMs); (if a publication is not written in English, an English translation of a key part - e.g. an abstract - and an independent statement on the publication's quality written in English - e.g. a review - should be provided)
5. three letters of support (from different stakeholders and, if possible, from different countries); and
6. the names and e-mail addresses of two persons who could provide further information, if needed.

All nominations must be sent by e-mail to the Chair of the Committee (konrad.krainer@aau.at) no later than May 31, 2019.

Konrad Krainer, Chair of the ICMI Emma Castelnuovo Award Committee
University of Klagenfurt, Department of Instructional and School Development
Sterneckstraße 15
9010 Klagenfurt, Austria

The Call for Nominations for the 2019 Felix Klein and Hans Freudenthal Awards can be found here.