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I have just returned from ICME-11 in Monterrey Mexico. It was a
huge conference with between 3000 and 4000 delegates from almost all of
the 84 member countries. I didn’t get an accurate count of the
number of Canadians but I encountered no less than 30. Many of
these took part in the program, either in topic or discussion groups, and
we had three regular lecturers, Carolyn Kieran, Louise Poirier, and
Christiane Rousseau. <br>
<br>
I attended the meeting of the General Assembly on the day before the
conference opened. This is essentially the governing body of ICMI
and it consists of the representatives from each country plus the 13
members of the Executive Committee. One of the main items of
business was the election of the new Executive Committee to serve for
three years from January 1, 2010 till end of 2012. This was an
historic election in that it was the first time it was elected by the
ICMI GA, rather than by IMU. The results are:<br><br>
<b><i>PRESIDENT:<br>
</b>William (Bill) Barton (New Zealand)<br>
<b>SECRETARY-GENERAL:<br>
</b>Jaime Carvalho e Silva (Portugal)<br>
<b>VICE-PRESIDENTS:<br>
</b>Mina Teicher (Israel)<br>
Angel Ruiz (Costa Rica)<br>
<b>MEMBERS AT LARGE:<br>
</b>Mariolina Bartolini Bussi (Italy)<br>
Sung Je Cho (Korea)<br>
Roger Howe (USA)<br>
Renuka Vithal (South Africa)<br>
Zhang Yingbo (China)<br><br>
</i>In particular note that Bernard Hodgson will step down as ICMI
Secretary-General at the start of 2010. This completes a mammoth
11-year term for Bernard, a period in which Canada gained a prominent
position on the ICMI map. .<br>
<br>
At the meeting a number of current issues were discussed, Committee
reports were received as well as reports from current or upcoming ICMI
studies, a few countries gave presentations (this year it was France,
Korea, South Africa and USA). Reports on most of these happenings
will appear in the ICMI newsletter, but I will mention a few that struck
me. By the way if you do not receive the online ICMI newsletter and
would like to, visit: <br>
<a href="http://www.mathunion.org/mailman/listinfo/icmi-news">
http://www.mathunion.org/mailman/listinfo/icmi-news</a><br>
and sign up.<br><br>
1. Efforts are being made to have more math education journals in
the Citation Index, as the CI now seems to commonly used in the
calculation of research impact factors. <br>
2. There was discussion of the continued financial health of ICMI
which currently loses about $7000 per year. One idea was to exact
dues for participation in the General Assembly from non-member
countries. <br>
3. Another significant issue involved the promotion of mathematics
education in developing countries. This is a joint enterprise with
IMU. <br>
4. Another joint IMU/ICMI undertaking is the “Pipeline Project”
concerned with issues around the supply and demand in teaching and the
workplace for graduates of mathematics programs. In recent years
IMU raised the concern of declining numbers of students choosing to
pursue mathematics at the university level. This seems to be a
world-wide trend over the past decade, and is a concern to a wide range
of professionals, not only mathematicians. A related problem, of
course, is the inadequate supply of qualified students entering
mathematics teacher programs. IMU enlisted ICMI to help them gather
data, so that at the beginning we have some idea of the real dimension
and locus of the problem. Such data has proved hard to gather and
it has been decided to mount an extensive study of 6 countries:
Australia, Finland, France, New Zealand, Portugal and USA. <br>
I'm happy to answer any questions.<br>
peter<br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times">Peter Taylor<br>
Professor , Department of Math & Stats<br>
Queen's University.<br>
Kingston, ON K7L 3N6<br>
(613) 533 2434<br>
peter.taylor@queensu.ca<br>
<a href="http://www.mast.queensu.ca/~peter/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.mast.queensu.ca/~peter/<br>
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