It’s been a few months now that I’ve been working on the notion of examples in order to analyze some of our data, in part with the help of Jacob Chartray who is doing a great job! I will present some of that work at the next MES conference in Brasil in July. I am really looking forward to seeing some of you there! The title of the paper is: The ambiguous nature of examples, and its potential for mathematical activity.
Author: Maheux, Jean-François
Cambodia Mathematics Teachers Association
I cannot report on everything we are doing here in Cambodia, but these are exciting times for sure and I am very happy to be part of it! This week, we created the basis of the Cambodia Mathematics Teachers Association. This is just the beginning, but we really hope the group will play a role in improving mathematics education in the country by allowing teachers to connect, share their work, their concerns, their ideas and so on. The group is supported by the Cambodian Mathematical Society (for which I am an “international advisor” (!). One of our hope is to …
Cambodia STEM Mentoring Forum
STEM education is growing strong in Cambodia, and we are organizing a special forum with speakers from Thailand and Singapore in addition to Cambodian to work together in order to identify key element for the design and implementation of a large scale STEM Mentoring program in Cambodia! It is taking place in Phnom Penh, on April 4th and 5th. With Dr. Catherine Prammer, I will myself do a short presentation/discussion on the STEM Excellence Pathway that was discussed in a previous CICME conference. Have a look at the webpage: www.tiny.cc/cambodiaSTEMforum
Mathematics Education in the 21st Century.
I had a great time at the Cambodia National Education Conference, talking for nearly an hour in front of 800 zoom attendees about “New emphasis” for Mathematics Education in the 21st Century. That was not an easy topic, but I think I managed to do a decent job presenting some of the most likely coming changes, and some of should still remain good teaching practices that can be relevant to the Cambodian context. That was a lot of fun anyways!
Evidence based education
“A troubling fact about teaching is that there is no established set of professional practices that have been proven to work independent of the particular actors involved and the particular time and place of the action.” – D. F. Labaree (2004). The trouble with ed schools (p. 53)
Epistemology and Ethics
I had this week a nice invitation from Pr. Beverly J. Irby from Texas A&M University’s College of Education to discuss with a class of PhD students about Epistemology and Ethics. I think we all enjoyed it a lot. Here is a bit of what I brought to the table!
CICME 2021
I am again involved in the organisation of the Cambodia International Conference on Mentoring Educators (CICME) 2021, our second one! The conference will be only online, and once again we will have about 70 presenters from all over the world. It is free to addend (on November 15-17)! Information and registration should be available at: https://cicme.ngprc.edu.kh I will myself have a little talk under the title: Didactical issues in the work of mathematics teacher advisors, in relation with our work at the GREFEM.
Misunderstanding
“We should not forget that not only understanding, but also misunderstanding is a necessary and useful condition in communication”. – Lotman, Y.M. Universe of the Mind. A Semiotic Theory of Culture, (p. 80-81)
On thechnology (including math)
“Human are not something natural that then develop technology: both coemerge. And in fact technology comes from behind. It is within the (back of the) human, and it arrives by chance” – David Wills. Dorsality: Thinking Back Through Technology and Politics.
L’obstacle et l’outil
“L’homme se découvre quand il se mesure avec l’obstacle. Mais, pour l’atteindre, il lui faut un outil. Il lui faut un rabot, ou une charrue.” “Humans find themselves when they measure against obstacles. But to engage the earth, we need tools. We need a spade or a plough” – A. de St-Exupéry. Terre des hommes.