ICME 11 - Day 5

The 5th day of ICME 11 starts with a panel debate. The topic being discussed is "Equal access to quality mathematics education". Here is the further description of the topic:

All students, regardless of age, race, ethnic group, religion, gender, socioeconomic status, geographic location, language, disability, or prior mathematics achievement, deserve equitable access to challenging and meaningful mathematics learning and achievement. This concept has profound implications for teaching and learning mathematics throughout the educational community. It suggests that ensuring equity and excellence must be at the core of systemic reform efforts in mathematics education.

A necessary component for quality mathematics education is that all students receive an education that takes into account each student’s background, including prior learning, characteristics, and abilities in a way that maximizes his/her learning and does not diminish in any way the goals s/he is expected to achieve. This pertains to both high-achieving and low-achieving students.

The panel debate is lead by Bill Atweh (Australia), and the other members are: Olimpia Figueras (Mexico), Murad Jurdak (Lebanon) and Catherine Vistro-Yu (The Philippines).

In the afternoon, there is a plenary lecture which is held by two speakers: Toshiakira Fujii (Japan) and Ruhama Even (Israel). Their topic is: "Knowledge for teaching mathematics". Here is a short abstract:

Recent presentations at PME and elsewhere suggest that knowledge of mathematics teaching has been the focus of much activity in a variety of countries. The title was considered broad enough to allow the presenters to refer to current research into pedagogical content knowledge as well as to content knowledge. This also led us to consider two presenters who could ensure an extensive viewpoint.