[ICMI-News] ICMI News 26: February/ March 2014, A Newsletter from the ICMI-International Commission on Mathematical Instruction

Fri Feb 28 15:27:57 CET 2014

ICMI News 26: February/ March 2014

A Newsletter from the ICMI-International Commission on Mathematical
Instruction

ICMI NEWS

Editors:                Abraham Arcavi (ICMI Secretary General) and Cheryl
E. Praeger (ICMI Vicepresident)

Email addresses:  ICMI_Secretary-General at mathunion.org / Cheryl.praeger
at uwa.edu.au

February 28, 2014

Contents

1. Editorial ? From the desk of ICMI Vice-President Cheryl E. Praeger

2. The Emma Castelnuovo Award

3. News in brief

4. Zoltan Dienes, In Memoriam

5. Have you read?

1. EDITORIAL

FROM THE DESK OF ICMI VICE- PRESIDENT CHERYL E. PRAEGER

Welcome to the March 2014 edition of ICMI News, and best wishes for 2014. I
am one of the ICMI Vice Presidents,

and have the privilege of serving the world-wide Mathematics Education
community through the 2013-2016 term of

the ICMI Executive Committee. I am a mathematician and also a member of the
executive committee of ICMI’s parent

union, the International Mathematical Union (2007-2014). A major part of my
contribution to ICMI is through

liaison with the IMU, and through my perspective and networks as an academic
mathematics researcher and teacher.

For more than 30 years I have worked on national educational and
mathematical bodies in Australia, including terms

on the Australian Government’s Curriculum Development Council and Prime
Minister’s Science Council, and recently

I was elected Foreign Secretary of the Australian Academy of Science. It is
a pleasure to serve at the

international level through ICMI.

Strong links between ICMI and the various mathematical sciences have great
benefit for each, and for the wider

community. Both mathematics and mathematics education benefit from including
mathematicians on the ICMI Executive,

and from working together on mathematical initiatives. Indeed the great
mathematician Felix Klein was ICMI’s first

President (1908-1920), and his seminal contributions are celebrated both
through ICMI’s Felix Klein Award for

lifetime achievement in Mathematics Education, and the Klein Project
launched in 2008 to support mathematics

teachers to connect the mathematics they teach with the field of
mathematics, taking into account the evolution

of mathematics over the last century. A short and readable biography of
Felix Klein, along with biographies of

many other mathematicians who have served ICMI over the last hundred years
can be found on the history of ICMI

website launched on the occasion of the ICMI centennial conference (Rome
2008) at http://www.icmihistory.unito.it/

The first joint ICMI Study was completed in 2011. It was Study 18:
“Statistics Education in

School Mathematics: Challenges for Teaching and Teacher Education”, and was
organized collaboratively by ICMI

and the International Association for Statistical Education (IASE). The most
recent ICMI Study completed was also

organized jointly, this time with the International Council for Industrial
and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM). It is

Study 20: “Educational Interfaces between Mathematics and Industry” (see
later in this newsletter).

I commend to ICMI News readers the forthcoming International Congress of
Mathematicians (ICM) to be held in Seoul,

Republic of Korea, August 13-21, 2014. Registration is now open:
http://www.icm2014.org/en/participants/registration/information 

The ICM will feature a special section “Mathematics Education and
Popularization of Mathematics” involving two

lectures and several panel discussions, addressing “all aspects of
mathematics education, from elementary school

to higher education, mathematical literacy and popularization of
mathematics”      (http://www.icm2014.org/en/program/scientific/topics)

Meanwhile, the ICM Organising Committee has produced a very attractive
mathematical calendar (see the last section below).

Several other ICMI initiatives will also be celebrated and reported on later
in this newsletter, including the

wonderfully successful Capacity and Networking Project (CANP) Cambodia led
by the immediate past ICMI President

Bill Barton in September 2013 in Phnom Penh.  Meanwhile the ICMI Executive
is working towards new

initiatives: a new ICMI Study and a new ICMI award (see below).  I hope you
enjoy this edition of ICMI News

in its new format, for which we thank the IMU Secretariat (especially Lena
Koch).

2. THE EMMA CASTELNUOVO AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN THE PRACTICE OF MATHEMATICS
EDUCATION

The Executive Committee of ICMI has decided to create a third award
alongside the Felix Klein Award and the

Hans Freudenthal Award. The new award will recognize outstanding
achievements in the practice of mathematics

education in order to reflect a main aspect of the ICMI essence not yet
recognized in the form of an award.

The new award will be named after Emma Castelnuovo, an Italian mathematics
educator born in 1913, in celebration

of her 100th birthday and honoring her pioneer work.

The Emma Castelnuovo Award for outstanding achievements in the practice of
mathematics education will honor

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 preparation

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 to learn from.

As for the existing awards, this award will consist of a medal and a
certificate, accompanied by a citation and

will be awarded only once every four years (and not once every two years as
is the case with the other two awards).

It will be officially delivered at the International Congress on
Mathematical Education (ICME) during the opening

ceremony alongside the Klein and Freudenthal awards.

Professor Ferdinando Arzarello, ICMI’s President, has appointed an ad-hoc
Committee, separate from the existing

committee established for the two other awards. Jeremy Kilpatrick was
appointed the first Chair, and five other

recognized and experienced scholars were appointed as Committee members and
their names will remain confidential

throughout their tenure. These members come from five different countries
(each from a different continent).

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.

A call for nominations follows.

NOMINATIONS SOUGHT FOR THE FIRST ICMI EMMA CASTELNUOVO AWARD

The Emma Castelnuovo Award Committee is pleased to announce that nominations
are being accepted for the first

ICMI Emma Castelnuovo Award.  The recipient of the award will be announced
early in 2015, and the award will be

conferred at the 13th International Congress on Mathematics Education in
July 2016 in Hamburg, Germany.  The awardee

(or its representative in the case of an institution, project, or
organization) will be invited to present a special

lecture at the Congress.

The Emma Castelnuovo Award will celebrate outstanding achievements in the
practice of mathematics education.  It

will honor persons, groups, projects, institutions, or organizations that
have done exceptionally excellent and

influential work in our field. Nominees 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 instruction, 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:

1) a document (max 5 pages) describing the nominee’s programme 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);

5) three letters of support (from different stakeholders and, if possible,
from different countries); and

6) the names and e-mail coordinates of two persons who could provide further
information, if needed.

All nominations must be sent by e-mail (jkilpat at uga.edu) to the Chair of the
Committee no later than December 15, 2014.

Jeremy Kilpatrick, 

Chair of the ICMI Castelnuovo Award Committee

105 Aderhold Hall

University of Georgia

Athens, GA  30602-7124

USA

3. NEWS IN BRIEF

• The book resulting from ICMI Study 20 entitled “Educational Interfaces
Between Mathematics and Industry” has been

  published in December, 2013. For more details, refer to

http://www.mathunion.org/icmi/news/details/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=861&cHash
=74e81cfcae1ac8262500b9564c5cdac2

• The ICMI Study 23 – “Primary Mathematics Study on Whole Numbers” was
launched in January 2014 in Berlin with the

  first meeting of the International Program Committee chaired by Mariolina
Bartolini and Sun Xuhua. The Discussion

  Document will be distributed in the near future and the Study Conference
will take place in 2015 in Macau, China.

• CANP (Capacity and Network Project) will take place in Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania, September 1-12 and will gather

  about 45 participants from four East African countries. For details,

http://www.mathunion.org/icmi/other-activities/outreach-to-developing-countr
ies/canp-project-2014-east-africa/ 

• The next meeting of the Klein Project will take place in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, during the week of 14-17 of

  April, 2014, and will be hosted by IMPA (Instituto Nacional de Matemática
Pura e Aplicada). 

• ICME 13, which will take place in Hamburg in 2016, has already announced
all the details of the plenary activities

  (lectures and panels), the thematic afternoon, the invited lectures
(called regular lectures in previous

  conferences) and the Survey teams. See http://icme13.org/

• The website Experiencing Mathematics contains a virtual exhibition
addressed to secondary school teachers and

  their students. It has been initiated and supported by UNESCO and it
contains more than 200 mathematical

  situations which provide opportunities to experiment, try out, make
hypotheses and try to prove them. It

  exists in five languages: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Arabic.

  The respective Pdf files can be downloaded from:

  http://www.experiencingmaths.org/pdf/DOCMATH_EN.pdf

  http://www.experiencingmaths.org/pdf/DOCMATH_SP.pdf

  http://www.experiencingmaths.org/pdf/DOCMATH_FR.pdf

  http://www.experiencingmaths.org/pdf/DOCMATH_PT.pdf

  http://www.experiencingmaths.org/pdf/DOCMATH_AR.pdf

• The Banff International Research Station (BIRS, http://www.birs.ca/) is a
joint Canada-US-Mexico initiative to

  facilitate collaborative research in mathematics and its applications to
science and industry. BIRS is located

  in the Rocky Mountains and it provides accommodation, board, and
facilities needed for research encounters. Every

  year, over 2000 researchers from 400 institutions in more than 60
countries participate in over 70 different

  workshops. Starting in 2015, additional workshops will also run in a newly
created facility called the Casa

  Matemática Oaxaca (CMO) in San Agustín Etla, Mexico. The new research
facility will also host summer schools

  and math education workshops for high schools teachers and students.

  (https://www.birs.ca/announcements/2014-02-07/mexico-funding-for-oaxaca)

4. ZOLTAN DIENES, IN MEMORIAM

The Hungarian mathematician Zoltan Dienes has passed away on January 11,
2014 at the age of 97. His ideas and his

work had a strong influence in mathematics education in many countries.
Details about his interesting biography

and the scope of his work can be found both in French and in English at

http://www.cfem.asso.fr/actualites/dienes_2014

5. HAVE YOU READ?

• The new edition of "Ethnomathematics and Education in Africa" edited by
Paulus Gerdes is a reprint of a book

  originally published in 1995 by the Institute of International Education
of the University of Stockholm (Sweden).

  The book contains a collection of papers on mathematics education and
African cultures, dating from the period

  1986-1992, published in international journals such as “For the Learning
of Mathematics”, “Educational Studies

  in Mathematics” and “Historia Mathematica.” The book can downloaded for
free at 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/paulus-gerdes/ethnomathematics-and-education-in-afr
ica-ebook/ebook/product-21423875.html

• A very nice “mathematical calendar” was created by the Seoul ICM
Organising Committee. It is based on mathematics

  easily accessible to students from junior high school onwards, and can be
downloaded from

  http://www.icm2014.org/download/calendar-ICM2014-A4.pdf

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