Presentation at ALM-website and at ALM 17, June 2010, OsloLena Lindenskov
COnnecting Research and Mathematics Education for All
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Next seminaris 7-8 April 2010 in Stockholm: For anyone interested in bridging practice development/investigations and research literature/activities in mathematics education after compulsory school. The focus is on Dialogue-based mathematics education, everyday mathematics, and learning mathematics in more than one language.
The project
The CORMEA project is partly financied by Nordic Council of Ministers’ programme NordplusVuxen; see
CORMEA is focused on a difficult but interesting and relevant problem – the problem of how to connect research and practice in mathematics education after compulsory school.
The CORMEA project is a Nordic cooperation of professionals who work with Mathematics Education. The main purpose is to bridge the gap between teachers and researchers. We have a special interest in Mathematics Education for adults but all the experience of research-teacher contacts is of interest to us.
The members of the group work in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. We all have a common interest in finding ways to make school teachers and researchers work more closely together. An important step in achieving this is to map their experiences of and attitudes towards Mathematics Education. Furthermore, we wish to use this knowledge to match teachers and researchers who share the same interest.
Knowledge of mathematics is essential both to the individual and to society. The individual needs it both for work and to take an active part in the democratic society. Society needs educated citizens who are qualified to make well-founded decisions. International comparative studies have led to the conclusion that education in mathematics needs to be improved in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. This concerns the educational system as well as the didactics and teaching methods on all levels. At the same time, Mathematics Education research is an expanding and developing area. Many important research findings have been presented in research reports in all three countries.
However, the dialogue between researchers and teachers seems to be limited. Many research conferences on Mathematics Education, both nationally and internationally, have relatively few participating teachers. Furthermore, teachers seldom take part in or influence Mathematics Education research. Important research reports don’t always reach the schools. Another problem is the fact that teachers often have difficulties finding research solutions to their own urgent problems. Even though existing Mathematics Education research findings are interesting, they are not always regarded as the most relevant ones. There seems to be a gap between teachers in mathematics and researchers in Mathematics Education.
The object of this project is to bridge the gap between teachers and researchers. We are aiming not only to make Mathematics Education as a research area better known among teachers, but also to improve contacts between researchers and teachers. This way, researchers can influence the development of the teaching in schools and teachers can influence the problem choices, and perhaps methods, in Mathematics Education research.
Questionnaire citations on ideas on ‘Why and how to connect’
Mathematics education research could reach teachers in a more efficient way if teachers would be able to be research students or researchers at the same time as they work as teachers.
There is a need for good dialogue between researchers and teachers. For this a good format is important, e.g. the dialogue seminar. This is prepared dialogues, where everyone has thought in advance and produced reflections concerning a certain topic. Teachers who have participated in dialogue seminars have said that "they learned to listen". Dialogue requires talking and listening, where listening is the hardest part.
Researchers get no ”cred” when they write for teachers (instead of the research community). This needs to be changed if we want an improvement of the situation.
The world of mathematics education research is often too big for teachers to keep track of. With more than 500 magazines and hundreds of new books coming each year, there is a need for investigators who specialize in helping teachers find interesting research results.
Teachers ought to be able to influence the choice of research areas that researchers make.
In special workshops, teachers and researchers in Umeå (Sweden) work together, constructing “rich” mathematics problems. This way, they learn about each other’s way of thinking and increase the chances of future cooperation.
In Värmland (Sweden) teachers get to work as” research scouts”, i.e. they go on seminars and then go back to their colleagues, reporting what they’ve learned.
In Sweden, the company “Skolporten” have a special website () with news concerning the world of education research, including presentations of researchers and their theses.
There ought to be an”ask a researcher”-website.
Three themes for 2010 – 2011
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Theme 1: Dialogue – based mathematics learning
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Researcher: Håkan Lennerstad. Adult students have generally more experience than young students, and are thus often more articulate about various issues. Furthermore, workplace mathematics needs to be put into connection and comparison with the more theoretical school mathematics to be efficient knowledge. This section of the Copenhagen Seminar aims at developing the ability for mathematics teachers to inspire discovering dialogues about mathematical issues, relevance and applications, where workplace experience may play a role. Adult students’ work experience may then become a natural resource in the education. Also, the teachers may evolve as teachers more by such mathematical dialogues. Achieving relevant mathematical dialogues is a rather ground breaking work since mathematics traditionally is very silent. If it is spoken, it is very often one-way-communication. The section is a small step towards developing a language for mathematical dialogue that works well for everyone.
Theme 2: Everyday Mathematics
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Researcher: Lena Lindenskov, is Professor wsr in Mathematics and Science Education at DPU School of Education, Aarhus University. Lena works at the Department of Curriculum Research, in 'Program for Fagdidaktik' (lit: 'Research programme for subject matter didactics') with adult learning mathematics as one of her research interests. Her different research interests in adults', adolescents' and children's engagements in learning and utilising subjects such as mathematics is symbolised in the question Should it be hard. The 'should' symbolises the silent power regime of mathematics as a tool for screening out a certain amount of people, i.e. by exacting mathematics at a certain level to access education and job. The 'it' symbolises the need for seriously analysing and reflecting upon which competences are relevant: is 'it' conceptual math understandings, math skills, mathematical competences, math-containing competences as analytical competences or ? The 'hard' symbolises people's experiences of struggling with difficulties in mathematics.
Theme 3: Mathematics learning in more than one language
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Researcher: Birgitte Henriksen is a Master in Mathematics Education and also a Master in German Teaching and Learning. She teaches Mathematics at the Teacher Education Blaagaard/KDAS and works as Senior Consultant at NAVIMAT, the National Center of Mathematics Education, which is part of the Profession Institute DIDAK at UCC, University College Capital. Previously she taught mathematics at an adult education center and a language center. During her studies at Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitetsskole, she has developed projects and a thesis, which has focused on bilingual and mathematics teaching. At the Copenhagen Seminar there will be a focus on the linguistic challenges that bilingual students may encounter in mathematics teaching and mathematics tasks. Choice of words, sentence structure and sentence length are among the linguistic elements that may impact on reading comprehension. Also native language and cultural backgrounds is important for bilingual students' mathematics learning and therefore focuses the section also on how these could be involved as a resource for mathematics teaching.