Themes

The broad objective of the conference is to report on the status of mathematics education in India at all levels of education: primary, secondary and tertiary, especially with regard to the themes listed below.

  1. Historical and Cultural aspects of mathematics and mathematics education: This will include historical contributions to mathematics, folk and ethnomathematics, mathematics education in pre-colonial India, and the colonial encounter in textbooks and pedagogy.
  2. Systemic and policy aspects of education: This will include an introduction to general structures of education in India, critical issues, selection and board examination systems, assessment culture, the "coaching industry", language policy, gender issues, regional diversity, equity policies and measures adopted by the Central and State Governments.
  3. Curriculum and pedagogy at various levels: At school level, the National Curriculum Framework 2005, recently revised state curricula, the impact of these on classroom ethos will be discussed. At all levels, the forces shaping curricula, and diverse innovations and experiments in pedagogy and research will be highlighted. Nurture and enrichment programmes, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels, will be discussed.
  4. Teacher education and development: This will include discussions of the reality of a large number of schools and shortfall of trained teachers; issues of content knowledge of teachers; structural challenges in teacher education; emergence of teachers’ networks; the impact of nation wide programs like the Sarva Shikhsa Abhiyaan and other similar initiatives at the national or regional level. Historical perspectives on the development of teacher education and in-service teacher development of mathematics teachers are also included.

We invite teachers, educators, mathematicians and mathematics education researchers to participate in the conference by submitting a paper on any of the themes listed above.