Within the GDM, there are a variety of working groups on special topics.
The working groups form an informal association of various experts in mathematics didactics who share the same interest and pursue a common goal. Each working group has a leadership consisting of two persons. The working groups are open to all interested members of the GDM. As a rule, the working groups meet several times a year for conferences and meetings at the annual conference of the GDM.
An overview of all current working groups with a short description and contact person can be found below.
Management
Gabriele Kaiser
Timo Leuders
Management
Renate Motzer renate.motzer@math.uni-augsburg.de
Deputy spokeswomen
Andrea Blunck andrea.blunck@uni-hamburg.de
Christine Scharlach christine.scharlach@fu-berlin.de
Aims and contents
The Working Group Women and Mathematics was founded in 1989 by Cornelia Niederdrenk-Felgner and Gabriele Kaiser. Members of the working group are women and men who are interested in gender-specific issues in mathematics didactics. Every year in autumn the working group organizes a “Fall Conference”.
Dates & Events
The next meeting of the working group will be held on Oct. 6-7, 2022, if it is possible to meet digitally again. If a meeting in presence is possible, this will take place on 7-8/10/2022 (location to be announced).
Link to the external AK homepage
www.uni-augsburg.de/arbeitskreis-frauen-und-mathematik
Management
Prof. Dr. Andreas Filler (HU Berlin) filler@math.hu-berlin.de
Prof. Dr. Anselm Lambert (Universität des Saarlandes) lambert@math.uni-sb.de
Aims and Content
The working group deals with all relevant topics around the teaching and learning of geometry – both quite elementary geometric content in primary and lower secondary education as well as more advanced topics that are especially suitable for the promotion of gifted students. The main goal of the working group is to (re)raise the profile of geometry in schools. The working group is open to teachers of all school types, to study seminars, university teachers and all those interested in geometry education beyond that. A comprehensive overview of the topics covered by the working group is given in our conference proceedings, most of which are available on our homepage www.ak-geometrie.de
Dates and Events
The AK Geometry holds its annual fall meeting in September. The exact dates and topics can be found on our homepage.
It is also a tradition of the working group to meet at the annual spring meeting of the GDM.
Link to the external Homepage
Management
Barbara Ott barbara.ott@phsg.ch
Elisabeth Rathgeb-Schnierer rathgeb-schnierer@mathematik.uni-kassel.de
Daniel Walter dwalter@uni-bremen.de
Gerald Wittmann gerald.wittmann@ph-freiburg.de
Aims and content
The Primary School Working Group in the Society for Didactics of Mathematics (GDM) was founded in 1991 at the suggestion of Hendrik Radatz. In the meantime, about 160 people are actively involved in the working group. The discussion of content takes place mainly at the annual fall conference at the beginning of November. The working group is open to all persons interested in mathematics learning and teaching.
Go here for subscribing to the mailing list for information of the WG primary school.
The goals of the working group are the reflection and further development of mathematics teaching in elementary schools in practice and theory and the further development of the didactics of elementary school mathematics as a science. The working group pursues these objectives by promoting the cooperation of all those directly or indirectly involved in mathematics teaching in practice, theory, and research.
Characteristic for the working group is the crossing of fixed boundaries and the opening of new perspectives on mathematics learning and teaching in elementary schools. The working group emphasizes dialogue and collaboration between universities and all school sectors, as reflected in the circle of participants, among others.
Mathematics didactic research and teacher education are related to each other in the working group. Contemporary mathematics didactic basic orientations are to serve both the development of a new teaching culture and the development of the culture of teacher education. The working group sets itself the task of productively linking the professional, pedagogical and psychological perspectives on mathematical learning and teaching through interdisciplinary cooperation.
The content-related discussion takes place at the annual fall conference in the following working groups, among others:
News
The 29th Fall Conference will be held online via Zoom from 11/11 – 12/11/2022.
We expect to be able to share more information about registration and the program here from June 2022.
Conferences and publications
Overview of previous conferences and publications of the WG primary school: PDF
Dates and events
29th Fall Meeting of the WG primary school; 11-12 Nov. 2022; online via Zoom.
Management
Christine Bescherer
Walther Paravicini
Angela Schmitz
E-Mail: sprecher_innen@hochschulmathematik.de
Aims and content
Especially our fall conferences serve the exchange of interested people from universities and universities of applied sciences from subject didactics, general university didactics and of course from the subject mathematics itself.
News, dates, events and more information:
https://madipedia.de/wiki/Arbeitskreis_Hochschulmathematikdidaktik
Management
Prof. Dr. Birgit Brandt birgit.brandt@zlb.tu-chemnitz.de
Prof. Dr. Kerstin Tiedemann kerstin.tiedemann@uni-bielefeld.de
Development
In 1978, Terhart coined the term Interpretative Classroom Research out of a critique of the prevailing research programs in classroom research and justified it with a symbolic-interactionist conceptualization. The essay “Kommunikationsmuster im Mathematikunterricht – Eine Analyse am Beispiel der Handlungsverengung durch Antwortantwortwartung” (Bauersfeld 1978), published in the same year, in which Heinrich Bauersfeld describes the funnel pattern as a stereotype of classroom reality jointly produced by teacher and learners, can be seen as the beginning of interpretative classroom research in German-language mathematics didactics. The Bielefeld working group around Bauersfeld at the IDM subsequently approached the intrinsic law of everyday school life with first case studies and in doing so also advanced the methodological and methodological examination of the development of scientific terms and concepts from the concrete field in mathematics didactics. This research approach, which was new at that time, was soon taken up by other research groups in mathematics didactics, and a nationwide working group on Interpretative Classroom Research was formed, which met regularly from the mid-1980s onwards at working conferences for joint interpretation sessions of different classroom recordings.
Aims
The Arbeitskreis Interpretative Forschung der Mathematikdidaktik sees itself committed to the tradition of Interpretative (Instructional) Research and would especially like to emphatically represent its scientific claim of empirically based theorizing: “We see its efficiency founded in its specific, sociologically oriented perspective, which is suitable to make mathematics education perceptible as a banal social event without any ifs and buts. It leads to theories with great empirical, contextual content, which consciously distances itself from theory developments with a claim to validity that is as global and decontextualized as possible.” (Jungwirth/Krummheuer 2006, 8)
Thinking framework
Interpretive research sees itself as a framework of thinking and offers a specific theoretical access to the world, which pre-structures the research process in the conceptualization of the research object and the methodological approach to the same. This framework of thinking is thereby to be adapted to the specific object of research in each case – the approach is thus not limited to specific mathematical content areas or age levels of learners and is open to many topics and questions. Common, however, is the interpretative basic stance in the sense of Symbolic Interactionism, which has been extended and supplemented by further theoretical concepts in the course of the now more than 30-year history, depending on the location of the practice or the goal of the development of the concept.
In order to do justice to the postulated goal of scientific ambition, one objective of the working group Interpretative Research consists in a discussion of the interconnections and compatibility of theoretical basic concepts and figures of thought for research in mathematics didactics. This methodological discussion is to be conducted in close relation to the scientific discourse outside mathematics didactic research.
Interpretative research belongs to the qualitative research paradigm and invokes the hermeneutic traditions of the social sciences and humanities for reconstructions of classroom events “from the internal perspective of the agents” (Maier/Voigt 1991, p. 8). Interpretative research takes on a descriptive function that is linked to the goal of elaborating theoretical constructs for a well-founded understanding of the processes of action and modes of functioning of this everyday practice, and it is precisely in this reconstructive stance that it sees starting points for change and for the establishment of new teaching realities. An essential field of activity of the working group to be founded are workshops with joint interpretation sessions on documents of mathematical development processes or from the everyday life of teaching-learning practice to establish and maintain an interpretative research practice with methodically controlled analysis procedures without implicit evaluation of the reconstructed realities.
Research field
The field of research in mathematics didactics has become broader in the last 30 years. Even if everyday school practice still constitutes a focal point of interpretatively oriented research projects, numerous projects can be found that leave this framework and, for example, also look at mathematical development processes in other social institutions. This development is reflected in the name of the new working group, which is to be founded, by the fact that the term Interpretative Research in Mathematics Didactics is not used.
Dates and events
Management
Jürgen Roth
Katja Lengnink
Holger Wuschke
Spokesperson team of the working group:
Gabriella Ambrus, Eötvös Loránd Universität Budapest
E-Mail: ambrus.gabriella@ttk.elte.hu
Johann Sjuts, Universität Osnabrück
E-Mail: sjuts-leer@t-online.de
Aims and content:
Publication:
„Mathematiklehren und -lernen in Ungarn“ (Herausgegeben von Éva Vásárhelyi und Johann Sjuts), WTM-Verlag Münster
Published:
Band 1: Éva Vásárhelyi & Johann Sjuts (Hrsg.) „Auch wenn A falsch ist, kann B wahr sein. Was wir aus Fehlern lernen können. Ervin Deák zu Ehren“ (308 Seiten) WTM 2019
Band 2: Gabriella Ambrus & Johann Sjuts & Ödön Vancsó & Éva Vásárhelyi (Hrsg.) „Komplexer Mathematikunterricht. Die Ideen von Tamás Varga in aktueller Sicht“ (391 Seiten) WTM 2020
Band 3: Éva Vásárhelyi & Johann Sjuts (Hrsg.) „Theoretische und empirische Analysen zum geometrischen Denken“ (420 Seiten) WTM 2021
Band 4: Gabriella Ambrus & Johann Sjuts & Éva Vásárhelyi (Hrsg.) „Mathematische Zeitschriften und Wettbewerbe für Kinder und Jugendliche. Förderung für Talentierte und Interessierte über Grenzen hinweg“ (406 Seiten) WTM 2022 (im Druck)
News:
For Volume 5 “Mathematics and Mathematical Thinking” (2023) there are already preliminary considerations and preliminary work.
CERME 13 (The 13th Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education) will be held in Budapest from July 9 to 14, 2023.
Dates and events:
7th Working Group Meeting: Online spring meeting on April 22, 2022.
Meeting of the working group in the context of the GDM annual meeting 2022 in Frankfurt (exact date still open).
Link to external Homepage
Management
Gilbert Greefrath, Universität Münster greefrath@uni-munster.de
Hans-Stefan Siller, Universität Würzburg hans-stefan.siller@mathematik.uni-wuerzburg.de
Aims and content
Mathematics is not only an abstract, logical science; mathematics is also a basis for many other sciences and for many things in our everyday lives. In order to convey this to students as well, authentic references to reality should be made in mathematics lessons. But where do you get the tasks from? How does one integrate these tasks concretely into the mathematics lessons?
In 1990, an international group was constituted in ISTRON Bay, Crete, with the aim of contributing to the improvement of mathematics teaching by coordinating and initiating innovations, especially at the European level. This group, named after its founding location, consists of eight mathematicians and mathematics didacticians from Europe and the USA.
The focus of the activities is to promote realism in mathematics teaching. The network idea is constitutive: the connection of activities and their supporting people on a local, regional and international level. The logo is also intended as a reminder of this.
Since 1991 there has been – as part of this network – a German-Austrian ISTRON group. Its members are teachers from schools and universities. The group has – in the spirit of the network idea – mutual connections with teachers on the local and regional level as well as with the international community. The group’s activities include the documentation and development of school-appropriate materials for reality-based teaching and learning of mathematics, as well as all kinds of efforts to bring such materials into school practice – through teacher training, textbooks, and educational plans, and, of course, especially through direct work in the field with learners. The ISTRON group offers in-service training for teachers and publishes a series of publications with relevant teaching units.
Dates and events
ISTRON-Meeting 2022
Link to external Homepage
Management
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Schorcht (sebastian.schorcht@tu-dresden.de)
Prof. Dr. Barbara Schmidt-Thieme (bschmidt-thieme@imai.uni-hildesheim.de)
Prof. Dr. Ysette Weiss (yweiss@uni-mainz.de)
Aims and content
The working group “History of Mathematics and Teaching” of the Society for Didactics of Mathematics exists since 1995 and was initiated by members of the section “History of Mathematics” of the German Mathematical Society. The working group unites mathematics historians as well as historically interested mathematics didacticians, mathematics teachers and mathematicians.
The following open collection of research topics are discussed in the working group:
Dates and events
University of Salerno (Department of Mathematics) Fisciano (SA), Italy.
Link Homepage:
Management
Florian Schacht florian.schacht@uni-due.de
Frank Reinhold frank.reinhold@ph-freiburg.de
Aims and content
The working group sees itself as a platform for the didactical discussion of the potentials and phenomena of the use of digital tools in mathematics education at schools and universities. In particular, it focuses on the effects of these tools on the learning and teaching of mathematics:
Digital tools expand and change access to mathematical concepts and procedures by opening up possibilities for networking, dynamization, and interaction.
Digital tools change the way we deal with mathematics in reasoning, problem solving, modeling, using representations, calculating, and communicating.
Digital tools are products of informatics. They enable the anchoring of computer science ideas such as formalization, algorithmization and modularization also in mathematics education.
Digital tools change teaching practice and place new demands on teachers, for example in terms of class management.
Digital tools are ubiquitous and thus touch upon issues related to general education in an essential way.
A critical and fruitful discussion of the effects of digital tools on the learning and teaching of mathematics includes the perspectives of research and practice alike. The working group is therefore a place for theoretical reflections, empirical observations, and practical teaching ideas.
News
There will be no fall meeting of the working group in the fall of 2022 due to the proximity of the federal meeting of the GDM in Frankfurt.
Management
Andras Batkai
Management
Günter Törner
Management
Nina Sturm nina.sturm@ph-ludwigsburg.de
Benjamin Rott benjamin.rott@uni-koeln.de
Aims and content
The Working Group Problem Solving addresses scientists as well as teachers and all other interested people who are engaged in research on (mathematical) problem solving and heuristics in a broader sense. The goals of the working group are to improve mathematics education with respect to problem-oriented teaching and learning, to promote numerous discussions and exchanges, and to establish possible collaborations in order to further develop this area in a targeted manner. Mathematics didactic research and teacher education are related to each other in the working group in order to serve both the development of a new culture of teaching and the development of the culture of teacher education and training.
News
In 2022 there will be no fall meeting because the GDM meeting has been moved to the fall. In 2023, a joint autumn meeting with AK Hungary is planned in Budapest.
Dates and events
Fall meeting 2023 (info to follow)
Link to external Homepage:
https://madipedia.de/index.php?title=Arbeitskreis_Problemlösen
Management
Prof. Dr. Anke Lindmeier anke.lindmeier@uni-jena.de
Prof. Dr. Daniel Sommerhoff sommerhoff@leibniz-ipn.de
Aims and content
The WG Psychology and Mathematics Education was founded as a national group following the international model of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (IG PME). It follows the goals of the IGPME. It was established around 1980 (and certainly before 1986). It is characterized by its strong interdisciplinary orientation and it addresses mathematics education researchers with a clear orientation – in theory and methods – to the reference science of psychology. It is open to participants from all working groups and locations.
News
Dates and events
Link Homepage
Management
Prof. Dr. Gert Kadunz gert.kadunz@aau.at
Prof. Dr. Christof Schreiber christof.schreiber@math.uni-giessen.de
Prof. Dr. Barbara Ott barbara.ott@phsg.ch
Aims and content
In broad agreement with the intentions of the working group, which were already formulated by M. Hoffmann at the time of its foundation, the activities are oriented towards fundamental problems of mathematics didactics research, which are circumscribed by the concept of representation. There are at least three reasons for this:
Mathematics is less concerned with things than with signs and certain representations of things. ‘In the beginning (…) is the sign’, as David Hilbert said. Whoever learns mathematics is forced to think about the way in which the signs of mathematics represent something, and he is confronted early on with the fact that in mathematics there is often a variety of representations for the same fact.
The problem of the relationship between representation and represented facts is exacerbated by the introduction of the computer into mathematics education. Due to the variety of possible representations and the fast change between them as well as the possibility of ‘experimenting’ with representations, the insight into the connection of different representations and their relation to mathematical facts becomes increasingly problematic.
Finally, in terms of epistemology and learning theory, it is significant that the possibility of cognition is always relative to a perspective, that is, it is itself mediated by representations. To ‘understand’ something is to be able to represent it (internally as well as externally). Seen in this way, all our thinking takes place in signs. Thus, signs are not only the object of learning mathematics, but they are also the means of cognition and learning.
Concretely in the classroom, the problem of representation arises in the question of the role of materials as means of illustration, communication, and knowledge representation.
The aim of the working group is to develop semiotics, i.e. the ‘theory of signs’, as an instrument for dealing with these and similar problems and thus to enrich the theory discussion in mathematics didactics.
News
Current information, for example about publications or the autumn conference, can be found on the external AK homepage.
Dates and events
Fall meeting 2022
Date: 28.09. – 30.09.2022
Location: Abtei Frauenwörth, Chiemsee ( Link einfügen: https://www.frauenwoerth.de/ )
Link Homepage
Management
Susanne Schnell schnell@math.uni-frankfurt.de
Karin Binder karin.binder@math.lmu.de
Aims and content
The Stochastics Working Group of the Society for Didactics of Mathematics (GDM) has been in existence since 1981. At present, about 50 people (mainly from universities, schools and study seminars) are committed to improving the teaching of stochastics in schools.
Every year in autumn, the working group organizes a conference on a special topic, the so-called autumn conference. It rests on five pillars:
Lectures on the main topic, in order to advance the content-related work in a focused way.
Lectures on free (stochastics didactics) topics, invited lectures by experts from neighboring disciplines, in order to strengthen the interdisciplinary and interconnecting perspective.
promotion of young researchers, where doctoral students have the opportunity to present and intensively discuss their work, and teaching development, where concrete teaching materials are critically discussed and productively developed.
Beyond the fall conferences, the working group meets for working sessions at the annual GDM conferences.
The working group cooperates closely with the Verein zur Förderung des schulischen Stochastikunterrichts and with its journal Stochastik in der Schule, in which conference contributions are published regularly.
News
Dates and events
Link to Homepage
www.didaktik-der-mathematik.de/akstochastik
Management
Astrid Brinkmann astrid.brinkmann@math-edu.de
Matthias Brandl Matthias.Brandl@Uni-Passau.de
Thomas Borys thomas.borys@ph-karlsruhe.de
Aims and content
In the working group “Networking in Mathematics Education” of the GDM, founded in 2009, a well-known and central demand on the learning of mathematics is considered in a new way: Mathematical knowledge and skills should not be taught and learned in isolation from each other, meaninglessly and unrelatedly side by side, but in their interrelation to each other, i.e., interconnected.
In terms of content, our working group is concerned with pointing out intra-mathematical relationships between the sub-areas that are usually taught in schools and with making teachers aware of the possibilities for networking them. In the acquisition of central competencies such as modeling and problem solving, as many areas of school mathematics as possible and also different representations of mathematical objects should be networked in order to obtain a rich stock of tools and problem solving techniques. It is also about a holistic (in)view of mathematics. Students should realize that mathematics is much more than calculating (numerical) results with the help of given formulas.
The central idea of interconnectedness is also addressed independently in the lessons and is thus also the content of our working group. This applies to methods for recognizing and learning interconnections and networks, such as mind mapping, concept mapping or learning maps, as well as to system dynamics as the key to modeling and understanding networked problems of our world, especially from the environment, nature and economics.
Methodologically, the claim “networked learning” seems at first like another difficult to fulfill demand of mathematics didactics to the already strongly challenged mathematics teachers. In fact, however, teaching experiences that we have gathered and want to pass on show that the efforts to teach mathematics in a networked manner have a relieving and motivating effect – those who teach in a networked manner make it easier for the learners, but also for themselves!
Socially “networking” is also a demand on ourselves to take up diverse ideas and suggestions for teaching mathematics in a cooperative and collegial way and to involve the corresponding persons as co-discussants and collaborators and to integrate them into the working group as far as desired.
News
Volume No. 7 of the series Mathe vernetzt has just been published by MUED. This can be purchased under the following link:
The volume appears at the bottom of the page under “new”.
We would like to thank everyone who contributed to the success of the volume. We wish the volume a large readership.
Link Homepage
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