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to Hypotenuse ContentsSince these congresses are now extremely large gatherings of members of the broad church which is mathematics education, it would be impossible to give an accurate account of the activities of the third week of July in Seville. I intend, therefore, to try to give the reader a personal view of my week in Seville, and some reflections on its worth professionally.
I was to attend a satellite conference on statistical education in Granada the following week, so I decided to hire a car for the time I was in Spain, which greatly simplified the travelling as I flew on a Belfast-Malaga charter, and therefore had to negotiate Malaga - Seville - Granada - Malaga. Very few of my fellow passengers on either flight showed any inclination towards cerebral activity during their Spanish sojourn! In the event, I was glad that I saw a little more of Spain than I would have without the car, and it meant also that I was not totally dependent on the conference organisation for travel -- and there were times when it struggled to cope with the number of people involved.
I quickly realised that patience, and a certain resourcefulness, would be important, particularly since I speak no Spanish. Arriving in Seville on Sunday evening I "enjoyed" an unexpected mystery tour of the area in which my residence was located -- it was not where the conference map showed it was, it displayed no external name signs, and it was unknown by name by a large number of people living in the immediate area, as well as a number of taxi-drivers.
I had asked to share an air-conditioned room with bathroom, and was put in a room with a fairly young German university lecturer, who specialises in geometry and didactics. This meant that we conversed very little about mathematics in any depth, but spent considerable time discussing education systems, Northern Ireland, the reunification of Germany (Karsten grew up in East Germany, and now works in Munich), the vagaries of English grammar -- though some of my own school teachers might blanch at the thought of anyone asking me about grammar -- and a whole spectrum of other topics.
The residence was clean and comfortable, it had a swimming pool, the breakfasts were good, the staff were as helpful as the language difficulties would allow, and the air conditioning worked -- which meant that a good night’s sleep could be had! It was some way from the conference site, but for the main sessions the shuttle bus service did its job well.
The morning sessions started at 8.30 a.m.each day, running to 1 or 1:30 p.m., and then again from 5.00 p.m. to 9.00 p.m., when there was a "Happy Hour" sponsored by different groups or companies. There were many different types of sessions organised, from workshops to poster sessions to traditional lecture presentations, and two blocks which occupied a total of six ninety minute slots -- and which you registered for in advance. Each of these had twenty-six different groups, covering the whole spectrum of mathematics education, so it was more difficult to narrow the choice down to only one than it was to find something that might be of interest.
I attended Topic Group 9 on statistics and probability at secondary level, and I found this to be very stimulating and worthwhile. There was a long list of invited speakers, and many of them were names I was very familiar with through their published works. The disappointment was that with only two 90 minute sessions for the topic groups, the speakers’ time had to be very strictly limited. I was glad that a large proportion of them were also in Granada the following week, and I could discuss matters in more detail with them then. The working group on the role of technology in the classroom unfortunately suffered from considerable technological hiccups in the planning and presentation, and consequently it was the one aspect of the congress’s academic activities where my expectations were not met or exceeded.
Other highlights were a memorable lecture by David S. Moore from Purdue, with a perceptive analysis of where statistics pedagogy is heading and a very varied workshop on the Mathematics of Chaos, offering activities from colouring iterative patterns that primary school children could learn a lot from, through Logo iterative procedures, to fractal pattern generation. The final day consisted of two plenary lectures looking at different aspects of the challenges and opportunities facing mathematics -- David Tall spoke on "Information Technology and Mathematics Education: Enthusiasms, Possibilities and Realities" and Jan de Lange spoke on "Real problems with real world mathematics" -- it was a pity that many delegates’ travel arrangements precluded their attendance at two lectures which were both entertaining and calculated to send one back to whatever aspect of mathematics education you were involved in with a renewed vision.
The "siesta time" in the middle of the day provided the opportunity to explore some of Seville’s other attractions. It is a large city, and the places of interest are rather too widespread for walking, particularly in temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius, as we quickly discovered. A horse-drawn carriage tour proved to be a very civilised way to get a sense of the architecture, the parks and plazas. Visiting the old buildings during the heat of the day made one appreciate how skilful use of materials, space and shade allowed these places to function before air-conditioning was invented.
We found that many of the cafes, bars and restaurants were really only opening for the evening when the conference business was concluding at 9.30 or 10 p.m. It was very common to see whole families, including very young children, eating together in these places at 11 p.m. or later. The overwhelming impression was that Seville was a fairly safe environment, and these establishments were rather more civilised than most British pubs. We had had warnings about bag-snatchers etc. before arriving, but saw little evidence in our time there.
It is hard to pin down exactly what the professional benefit of attending such a conference is, and certainly I find it difficult to articulate adequately. Obviously, the scheduled sessions offer similar learning contexts to other inservice opportunities, with many very well known speakers. There are two distinctive areas however, which go beyond the scope of other inservice opportunities. One is the chance to meet with other professionals whose main areas of interest is quite different from your own, often offering quite different perspectives on mathematics education. The second is the opportunity to exchange views in depth with those within your own particular sphere of interest, from other countries and other areas of the United Kingdom, some of which meetings result in continuing contact -- particularly now that communication is so easy by electronic mail.
I would like to record my thanks to the IMA, and also the Royal Society and the Governors of Belfast Royal Academy, for their generous financial support which enabled me to attend a Congress which I will remember fondly for a long time.
From Seville, I went to Granada via Cordoba where La Mezquita took my breath away -- an enormous Catholic Cathedral, started in 1523 and built, literally, within an even larger Mosque, dating back to 833. Granada is an exquisite town, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and home to the Alhambra and the Generalife. The University at Granada has a thriving statistics research department, and three of its members acted as the local organisers, ensuring that all the day-to-day details worked smoothly, and they had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that everyone had a chance to appreciate something of the history and culture of the town.
This was an invitational "roundtable conference" on the role of technology in teaching statistics, with 24 participants from around the world. Papers were presented in 5 sections, covering college and secondary level statistics, the development of software, and the role of research in the teaching and learning of statistics. The format was that papers were submitted before the conference, so all participants had copies of the papers, and presenters could talk to the paper, and demonstrate examples on computer projection if need be, rather than simply read the paper out.
I gave a presentation entitled "Developing probabilistic and statistical reasoning at secondary level through the use of data and technology" in the first section -- which meant that I was able to enjoy participating in the rest of the conference without having my presentation looming like the sword of Damocles. Another paper in this section was by Gail Burrill, on the use of statistical graphing calculators such as the TI82 and TI83. It is planned that the papers are to be published in conference proceedings, and that they will also be available in the near future on the World Wide Web. As and when they are, Hypotenuse may publish details of the site, but if anyone wishes to have a copy of the paper I presented then they should contact me at Belfast Royal Academy.
There is a completely different atmosphere at a small conference like this. While it was undoubtedly very hard work -- a very concentrated period of five days, covering a lot of issues in statistical education in real depth -- it was very stimulating, and very enjoyable. Our hosts looked after us superbly, and there was time to get to know the other participants a little, and to debate further many of the issues which arose during the presentations. The conference was sponsored by the IASE, who also provided further financial support to help me attend, and I would like to record my thanks to them.
The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and the International Association of Statistical Education are two examples of professional associations, within mathematics, which can offer much to the practising teacher in the classroom. Details of how to get futher information about both of them can be found below.
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The International Association for Statistical Education is a section of the International Statistical Institute. Subscription fees are about £ 26 a year (and entitle you to a 20% reduction in subscribing to the journal "Teaching Statistics") -- I don’t think there is a joining fee. Contact ISI at 428 Prinses Beatrixaan, P.O.Box 950, 2270 AZ VOORBURG, The Netherlands. Tel: 00 31 70 3375737 Fax: 00 31 3860025 or E-Mail: isi@cs.vu.nl
The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications has various categories
of membership. The two most likely to be appropriate immediately to teachers
are Graduate membership and Associate Fellowship (£ 52 a year). Additional
information and application forms are available from: The Executive Secretary,
The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, Catherine Richards House,
16 Nelson Street, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS1 1EF. Tel: 01702 354020. Fax:
01702 354111.
E-Mail: post@maths.demon.co.uk