MKT seminar in Stavanger

June 20-21, our research group at the University of Stavanger had a seminar on mathematical knowledge for teaching at the beautiful Sola Strand Hotel. 12 invited researchers from Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Portugal and the U.S. participated together with four researchers from UiS. All participants presented their work, and there was also set aside time for discussions.

The participants of the seminar had different approaches to MKT, and this provided a nice setting for discussions. Our group had very much built upon the work that Sean Delaney have done in Ireland when we have translated adapted and used MKT items in a Norwegian setting. Dicky Ng has followed a similar approach in Indonesia. Miguel Ribeiro from Portugal has used MKT as an analytic framework for his research, whereas Jorryt van Bommel from Sweden (originally Holland) has studied MKT as the object of learning in her learning studies. Other participants in the seminar, like Bodil Kleve from Oslo University College, has worked with Rowland's "knowledge quartet". All these, and other, projects were presented and discussed in what turned out to be a very nice seminar.

One of the presenters, Sean Delaney (see photo below), pointed out some possibilities for future collaboration in this area, and some of the participants at the seminar have already started working on a proposal for a symposium at next year's AERA conference. Hopefully, even more collaboration will follow from the seminar.

The 2011 NORMA conferernce

This week, The sixth Nordic Conference on Mathematics Education, NORMA 11, is held in Reykjavik, Iceland. The conference is organized by the University of Iceland in association with the Nordic Society for Research in Mathematics Education. NoRME. I have been to the previous two NORMA conferences in Copenhagen (2008) and Trondheim (2005), and I enjoyed both. This year, however, I decided to stay at home and let two of my colleagues represent our group and present our paper. If interested, our presentation is published in our Norwegian web page (the presentation itself is in English).

The confence gathers researchers not only from the Nordic countries, but also from the rest of Europe and outside. Plenary speakers are Marit Johnsen-Høines, Bergen University College, Núria Planas, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Bharath Sriraman, The University of Montana, and Roger Säljö, University of Gothenburg. Unfortunately, the conference does not have a very strong online presence (no official use of social media), but the program at least gives some indications. After the conference, a book is often published containing the accepted papers from the conference.

ICMI is on facebook (and so am I by the way...)

I recently learned that ICMI is now on facebook! This was revealed in their latest newsletter, and I have already become a "friend". If you are interested, make sure you pay a visit to their facebook page. If interested, you might also want to check out my own Mathematics Education Research Page on facebook (see image below!), where I post even more updated news than on this blog :-)

I have moved!!!

The headline of this post is not completely correct, since it is really not a matter of me having moved personally. The thing is, however, that this blog - The Mathematics Education Research Blog - has now moved to a different place! I have been considering this for quite some time actually, and I have now decided to move the blog to a Wordpress platform. Reasons for this decision are many, I guess, but here are the two most important reasons:

1. Wordpress is a very flexible blogging platform (even more so than Blogger)!
2. And I needed some change myself too...

There has also been a long process during some very busy months this Spring, where I have spent some time discussing with myself whether or not to continue working on this blog or not. I have come to a decision, and I will keep on blogging, but in a different place, and I hope that I will (gradually) be able to change and hopefully also improve the blog. In the two-year phase, the main purpose of the blog was for it to be useful to me. To me, this is still an important reason to blog! In the future, however, I also want the blog to become more useful to you as a reader. If you want to know how, you have no other choice but to update your bookmarks and start following my "new" blog over at: http://mathedresearch.wordpress.com :-)

First Sourcebook on Nordic Research in Mathematics Education

The First Sourcebook on Nordic Research in Mathematics Education is going to be released in July this year, and I have been given the opportunity by the main editor, Professor Bharath Sriraman, to publish the cover photo and the table of contents first, here on this blog!

Being the first one to provide this news is of course great, and I guess that I am also enthusiastic about the book because I am one of the authors. The main reason why I am really enthusiastic about this book, however, is that it is going to be a monumental documentation of Nordic research and contributions to the field of mathematics education research. Putting together a book like this is a feature in itself, and I tip my hat to Bharath and the co-editors for this effort! I am happy that I have been able to be a part of it, and I am looking forward to digging into it! And I am quite certain that the hopes, which are expressed by the main editor in the foreword, are going to become true when it comes to this book. It will be "of use to many generations of mathematics education researchers inside and outside the Nordic world" (p. xii).

So, keep an eye on the publisher's website at http://www.infoagepub.com/products/First-Sourcebook-Nordic-Research-Mathematics-Education to make sure you don't miss the release date! And, in the meantime you can build your expectations by reading the table of contents as well as the foreword below:

TheFirstNordicSourcebook_TOC

New issue of Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education

A new issue of Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education has been published (See SpringerLink - Journal Issue). The issue contains five interesting articles, all of them with a strong focus on inquiry:

The challenge in developing in mathematics teachers an inquiry stance to teaching, by Peter Sullivan.

Collaborative teacher inquiry as a tool for building theory on the development and use of rich mathematical tasks, by David Slavit and Tamara Holmlund Nelson.

The effect of video-based approach on prospective teachers' ability to analyze mathematics teaching, by Othman N. Alsawaie and Iman M. Alghazo.

Learning to teach mathematics through inquiry: a focus on the relationship between describing and enacting inquiry-oriented teaching, by Jo Towers.

Conceptions of effective mathematics teaching within a cultural context: perspectives of teachers from China and the United States, by Jinfa Cai and Tao Wang.

Theories of Mathematics Education - Recommendations from Reuben Hersh

"Theories of Mathematics Education: Seeking new frontiers" is the first book in the series: Advances in Mathematics Education. The book was published a while ago, and it has already received good reviews and recommendations. The last in line to recommend the book is Reuben Hersh, and he has some very positive things to say about it:

A very impressive new book, "Theories of Mathematics Education" (Springer) edited by Sriraman and English is meant to inaugurate a new series, "Advances in Mathematics Education" . This first book in the series is a massive and ambitious undertaking, a very wide-ranging survey written in a dialogic format. (See this link for more!)

JMTE, April 2010

The April issue of Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education has recently been published. This issue contains 6 interesting articles:

• Crossing the divide: reflecting on the benefits of international collaboration, by Anne D. Cockburn
• Secondary mathematics cooperating teachers’ perceptions of the purpose of student teaching, by Keith R. Leatham and Blake E. Peterson
• Analyzing and attempting to overcome prospective teachers’ difficulties during problem-solving instruction, by Alexander Karp
• Developing teachers’ knowledge of students as learners of mathematics through structured interviews, by Oliver F. Jenkins
• The influence of video clubs on teachers’ thinking and practice, by Elizabeth A. van Es and Miriam Gamoran Sherin
• Prospective primary mathematics teachers’ learning from on-line discussions in a virtual video-based environment, by Salvador Llinares and Julia Valls

The article by van Es and Sherin is an Open Access article, so that one should be available even for non-subscribers!

New issue of IJMEST, vol 41, issue 3, 2010

A new issue of International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology has been released, and it contains a whole host of interesting articles and classroom notes. This issue appears to have a particular focus on the use of technology in mathematics teaching, and here is a list of the original articles that are contained in the issue:

• Sustainable student retention and gender issues in mathematics for ICT study, by Blazenka Divjak, Mirela Ostroski and Violeta Vidacek Hains
  
• A proposal for a variation on the axioms of classical geometry, by Bjorn Schellenberg
  
• Trends in performance of science and technology students (1997–2008) in Ireland, by Olivia Gill, John O’Donoghue, Fiona Faulkner and Ailish Hannigan
  
• Relational understanding and paths of reasoning through a Boolean lattice classification of quadrilaterals, by J. Karakonstantis and T. Patronis
  
• Using dynamic geometry to explore non-traditional theorems, by Arsalan Wares
  
• A new approach for proving or generating combinatorial identities, by Luis González
  

Review of my blog

After a slow month (on the blog - not at work!), it is great to see someone writing a nice review of this blog. This time it is Jerry Johnson from MathNEXUS who has written a very kind review. MathNEXUS is a web site particularly geared towards teachers of mathematics, and it presents itself as a mathematics portal with "news and ideas for teachers and learners of mathematics. So, if you're into teaching and/or learning of mathematics it might be worthwhile to check it out!

Thanks for the kind words, Jerry :-)