The Hans Freudenthal Award, with which ICMI honors innovative, consistent, highly influential and still ongoing programs of research in mathematics education, is awarded in 2024 to Professor Ole Skovsmose, Professor Emeritus of Aalborg University, Denmark, for his outstanding contributions to the very foundations of mathematics education through his career-long explorations of Critical Mathematics Education.

Skovsmose’s professional work springs from his experiences as a student and mathematics teacher. From 1968 to 1975, he studied mathematics and philosophy at Copenhagen University, while also working as a teacher at the Copenhagen Day and Evening Teacher Training College. His doctoral work at the Royal Danish School of Educational Studies drew inspiration from his personal experience that mathematics in classrooms tended to be oppressive for students; but that it was also possible for the teacher to bring alternative ways of working with mathematics that did not reproduce such oppression. His early doctoral writing was not looked on favorably, because it lay too far outside of the disciplinary traditions; but he persevered and earned his Ph.D. in 1982.

A postdoctoral stay at Cambridge University with Alan Bishop in 1990-91 was crucial in shaping Skovsmose’s seminal book Towards a Philosophy of Critical Mathematics Education. This comprehensive work was submitted to examination at the Faculty of Engineering and Science, Aalborg University, for the degree of Doctor of Science, the highest research degree that exists in Denmark. Skovsmose is the only Danish mathematics educator to have been awarded this academic title.

Towards a Philosophy of Critical Mathematics Education lays out the fundamentals of Critical Mathematics Education – broadly, that mathematics and mathematics education are rooted in the historical, cultural, political and economic structures of society. As such, they cannot be considered value-neutral practices, but rather deeply entangled in the production and reproduction of both goods and evils in past and contemporary inclusions and exclusions.

Skovsmose’s life-long contributions, including an extensive series of books beginning in 1994 and continuing to the present (Critical Mathematics Education was published in 2023) have shaped this important area of mathematics education in two distinct ways. First, Skovsmose has an extensive, sustained and creative authorship with a strong intellectual contribution in three topics: the possibilities and limits of school mathematics education practices, the functioning of mathematics in action as performative force in science, technology and society, and the philosophy of mathematics. These three topics together provide a comprehensive philosophy of Critical Mathematics Education (CME).

Second, Skovsmose has supported a number of communities around the world through academic exchange, collaborative research projects and doctoral mentorship. This support has been crucial in the development of CME in different contexts. His work has had profound practical and theoretical impact in Denmark; his key work has been produced in Danish and English, and translated mainly into Portuguese and Spanish, but also Greek, Turkish and more recently Persian. His work, originally “against the gain” of contemporary scholarship in mathematics education, is increasingly cited around the globe – and amplified by research partnerships in contexts as diverse as Brazil and South Africa.

Indeed, the very enterprise of mathematics education is fundamentally different now than it was decades ago. It is impossible to conceptualize the field, even when working in classrooms, without attention to the ways in which our work is rooted in the historical, cultural, political and economic structures of society. This significant and ongoing contribution to our collective understanding makes Ole Skovsmose an eminently deserving recipient of the Hans Freudenthal Award for 2024.