ICME Day 2 (part 2)

The first ASG meeting of the HPM group consisted of two interesting talks. Gert Schubring’s talk was titled “Researching into the History of Mathematics Education – an HPM perspective”. He discussed how teachers were educated in different states from the middle of the 18th century. (Before that, states took little interest in this.) The talk was packed with information, and I can obviously not repeat it here. However, it was interesting to hear how there was a huge effort after the French revolution to teach teacher educators, while in France in 1763, it was argued that it was needless to educate teachers, as good textbooks would make sure that the teachers could educate themselves.

Fulvia Furinghetti talked on “The emergence of women in the international arena of mathematics education – Just so stories”. Although it was a talk about the women who has played a role, the main picture is of course that there have been very few women who has been prominent in the field until recently. Lately, that has luckily changed.