Lisbon, Portugal, 16–18 December 2007
There is substantial evidence that, in developed countries, interest in mathematics during the pre-18-year-old school career has declined sharply in the last 20 years. In these countries, the level of performance in mathematics of students leaving high school is also subject to a (sometimes harsh) debate. Over the last two decades, this situation has already led to statements about ways to alleviate these tendencies and initiatives to reform mathematics education.
Taking this into account, but also that the teaching and learning of mathematics at the primary and secondary school levels are of utmost importance in view of students’ choices of study fields and of their success in higher education, the HERCULES Group of the Academia Europaea considered it timely to organize a conference focused on a broad reflection on the state-of-the-art of mathematics education in Europe in a future perspective. The conference, held in Lisbon, was promoted by the Academia Europaea in the framework of the Portuguese Presidency of the European Union. The start of the conference coincided with the opening in the Pavilhão do Conhecimento on 16 December of the exhibition Experiencing Mathematics, supported by UNESCO; the sessions on 17 and 18 December took place in the premises of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon.
The programme involved, in the opening session, a keynote lecture on ‘The future of mathematics education: (one person’s) international perspective’, by Alan Schoenfeld (UC at Berkeley), and four thematic sessions. In each session three or four 30-minute papers were presented, followed by an extensive panel discussion of one hour and 15 minutes. Three sessions addressed mathematics learning and teaching at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of education respectively, and the fourth session focused on some major challenges for mathematics education.
The closing session of the conference focused on ‘Synthesis, agenda for action and conclusion’. A more detailed overview of the programme is available on the conference website: www.fmee2007.org
The conference – held in English with simultaneous translation in Portuguese – was attended by 274 participants (229 Portuguese and 45 foreigners).
It is not possible to give in this report a full overview of what was presented by the speakers and of the discussions that took place during the panel sessions. Therefore, just a few main topics will be mentioned here. The need for mathematically rich content and process standards; curricula and assessments aligned with those standards; meaningful professional development in accordance with the standards set; and stability that allows for professional growth, were topics stressed in the opening lecture. The session on primary education paid particular attention to the modelling perspective in teaching mathematics and the importance of approaching mathematics as a science of patterns. Teaching and learning mathematical modelling was also addressed in the session on secondary education. Likewise discussed were innovations in the curriculum, in the use of technology, and in teaching methods, as well as the training of prospective mathematics teachers. The latter topic also figured in the session on tertiary education. This session also paid attention to the gap in mathematics education between, and the transition from, secondary to tertiary education, as well as to mathematics e-learning. Two major topics in the session on ‘challenges’ were mathematical literacy and its role in meeting the needs of society and its citizens, and mathematics and information technology.
A sample of the main action-oriented ideas that came to the fore in the closing session includes: teaching mathematics as a sense-making activity, the development of training programmes that focus on covering the growing gap between school and university education; and the need to convince the public in general, and the policy-makers in particular, that in-depth study of mathematics is necessary to form an intellectual elite in a nation.
Throughout the conference it became obvious that the major issue of an agenda for action for the near future is certainly the urgent need for consultation, negotiation and especially collaboration among the main ‘shareholders’ in the field of mathematics education, namely mathematicians, professional mathematics educators and researchers on mathematics learning and teaching. Indeed, it transpired that there are often serious gaps between the views of, and the perspectives on, mathematics education of these groups. The conference has convincingly shown that it is high time to abandon the conflict model, and to adapt and adhere to the dialogue model.
The Proceedings of the conference, edited by Erik De Corte, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon and José Francisco Rodrigues, will appear in a volume that is now in preparation, and which will be published by the European Mathematical Society Publishing House.
