A core component of the program of the symposium is five work groups, where several of the participants have posted interesting articles for download. The themes of the working groups are:
The symposium also includes nine plenary sessions:
The conference starts tomorrow, and it is closing on Saturday. So if you don’t have the opportunity to be there, take a look at the webpage! There are lots of interesting material there.
An impressive gathering of keynote speakers, and a very interesting program indeed. Watch out for the proceedings, they are going to be electronic!
Yesterday, the CMEG-5 conference started. The 5th International Conference on Creativity in Mathematics and the Education of Gifted Students is held in Israel, and it closes on Thursday. One of the interesting plenary lectures is held by Gerald Goldin of Rutgers University, USA. The title of his presentation is “The Affective Dimension of Mathematical Inventiveness”, and here is the abstract with references:
The affective domain includes emotional feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and values, as well as many complex psychological and social constructs in which these occur.
Recent research points to the fundamental importance of affect in mathematical learning and problem solving. Some aspects of the structure of mathematics, as a disciplined way of generating knowledge and as a traditional school subject, can raise high affective barriers to students’ curiosity and inventiveness.
In this talk I shall first highlight some theoretical ideas important in current research, including: affect as an internal, interactive representational system; affective pathways; meta-affect; mathematical intimacy, integrity, and personal identity; and archetypal affective structures. I shall then discuss how we can develop affective processes and structures – in our students and in ourselves – that foster mathematical ability and mathematical creativity.
References:
DeBellis, V. A. & Goldin, G. A. (2006). Affect and meta-affect in mathematical problem solving: A representational perspective. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 63 (2), 131-147.
Epstein, Y., Schorr, R. Y., Goldin, G. A., Warner, L., Arias, C., Sanchez, L., Dunn, M., & Cain, T. R. (in press). Studying the affective/social dimension of an inner-city mathematics class. Proceedings of the 29th Annual Conference of PME-NA (Lake Tahoe, Nevada, November 2007).
Goldin, G. A. (2000). Affective pathways and representation in mathematical problem solving. Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 2, 209-219.
Goldin, G. A. (2002). Affect, meta-affect, and mathematical belief structures. InLeder, G., Pehkonen, E., & Törner, G. (Eds.), Beliefs: A Hidden Variable in Mathematics Education? Dordrecht: Kluwer (pp. 59-72).
P.S. Goldin’s article can be read in its entirety in the conference proceedings, which is freely available as a downloadable PDF!
(…) that the later Wittgenstein presents us with an unreservedly social interpretation of mathematics that favours a certain direction for our research on mathematics education. According to this interpretation, mathematics could be considered to be constituted exclusively in complex social processes, in which case any conception of it mirroring a pre-existing world of mathematical objects is rejected. To contrast with the Wittgensteinian position, a Platonist position is presented and the two philosophical positions are discussed in relation to their significance for mathematics education (from the abstract).
These are interesting questions for all researchers within the field. If you are interested in learning more about the contents of the conference, you should take a look at the programme. Most of the material (articles from plenary lectures, paper/project discussions etc.) are available for download in pdf format!
The plenary lectures are:
Reidar Mosvold 