The objective of this month’s Forum is to discuss the role mathematicians play in mathematics education. There are many famous mathematicians who contributed to mathematics education; Felix Klein, Hans Freudenthal, Erich Christian Wittmann, Leonhard Euler, György (George) Pólya, and Nikolai Lobachevsky come to mind, as well as Hung-Hsi Wu. However, “mathematics is not mathematics education” (Bass, 2005), so, what might have sparked their interest in the study of teaching, and how were they able to affect it?

 

Wittmann (2020) argues that “Connecting mathematics and mathematics education requires looking at mathematics from the point of education and also looking at mathematics education with a broad understanding of elementary mathematics,” and cites Heintel (1978) who wrote that “taking subject matter fundamentally into account in building didactical models means breaking up the narrow boundaries of special disciplines, reconstructing ‘deep-frozen’ learning processes, and elaborating the social use of knowledge and also its limitations.” Our speakers, who are mathematicians, also have interest in mathematics education and will present their views and involvement in it.

 

Please find the agenda here.