The 10^th International Conference on the Teaching of Mathematical Modelling and Applications (ICTMA 10) was held in Beijing, in July/August 2001. This was the first time that the conference had been held in an eastern country, and it was a timely move. As well as the political and cultural changes evident in China over the last number of years, there are also the beginnings of important changes to the mathematics curricula in both schools and universities. The influence of two decades of the mathematical modelling movement in the west was beginning to be felt, and both teachers and academics were eager to meet their western counterparts and to share with them their excitement at these developments.

This volume contains a collection of 25 of the contributions to ICTMA 10, and a high percentage of these are by Chinese authors who describe their developing work. The rest of the contributions are by authors resident in "the west", including Australia, and these papers describe ongoing developments in curriculum design and teaching methods. However they also concentrate on research into the learning of modelling, and this research is giving the community greater insights into the ways in which students develop as modellers. These insights will inform pedagogy, making it more effective and efficient.

There is an innovation in this book. The plenary panel discussion session was recorded, transcribed and edited into a report by the chair of the session. This is included as Chapter 26 and it gives some insights into the thinking of the "experts" who were foolhardy enough to sit on the panel!

Each chapter is assigned to one of seven themed sections, but the reader should be aware that the allocation of chapters to themed sections is an inexact science (apart from assigning chapter 26 to section G, that is). Accordingly they should look carefully at all chapters to ensure that they do not miss anything of interest.

Section A has six chapters dealing with various research programmes. The two-chapter section B describes the role that competitions for students can play in developing their modelling skills. Technology continues to develop and to play a big part in modelling and the three chapters in section C describe both innovation and research in the use of technology in teaching modelling. The four chapters in section D provide exemplars to enrich teaching while section E has three chapters of particular interest to teacher educators. However the most culturally enriching section is section F, which has seven chapters describing developments in China.

The book as a whole complements the series of books emanating from the biennial ICTMA conferences (see next page for details) and it aims to provide an additional source of information and ideas for those engaged in the teaching, learning and assessment of mathematical modelling in secondary and tertiary institutions. It will be of particular interest to any who want to read about recent developments in China.

Author’s affiliations and e-mail addresses are given in each chapter to facilitate communication. We are grateful to all authors for their contributions, their care in presenting their material and their patience while waiting for the editors to complete the book.

We thank the International Executive Committee of the ICTMA and the Local Organising Committee in Beijing for the roles they played in making the conference happen. Finally we are grateful for the continued support and encouragement of our publisher Ellis Horwood (Horwood Publishing) who has been a consistent supporter of the ICTMA series over many years.

We hope that the reader will enjoy this book and will find it useful for enhancing their teaching, for stimulating their research or for informing them of world-wide developments.

The ICTMA website is http://www.infj.ulst.ac.uk/ictma/

Qi-Xiao Ye Werner Blum Ken Houston Qi-Yuan Jiang
 
 

BOOKS EMANATING FROM ICTMA CONFERENCES