Eleventh Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education discussed relationships of language and mathematics education

Eleventh Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME11), hosted by the Freudenthal Group, in collaboration with the Freudenthal Institute, of Utrecht University took place in Utrecht, the Netherlands, from the 6th to 10th of February, 2019.

The Netherlands, and especially Utrecht University has a longstanding experience in researching and designing mathematics education, for which Freudenthal and his collaborators laid the foundation about half a century ago and that since then has further developed as a strong research community with theoretically and practically relevant output. So the European researchers of mathematics education had a good academic environment for sharing knowledge. The aim was to bring together people active in the field of mathematics education research from all over Europe, and beyond.

One of Thematic Working Groups for CERME 11 was “Mathematics and Language”. Participants examined multiple facets of language diversity and mathematics education. It featured renowned authors from around the world and explored the learning and teaching of mathematics in contexts that include multilingual classrooms, indigenous education, teacher education, new media and tertiary education. During these days the work in the group “Mathematics and Language” was intense and inspiring.

Professor Salekhova Leila from Kazan Federal University took part in CERME 11 and delivered a report «Abstract thinking and bilingualism: impact on learning mathematics». She studies the impact of bilingualism on academic performance in mathematics. The current research explored whether a bilingual advantage may reveal itself in solving novel hard math tasks that require abstract reasoning. Professor Salekhov's report aroused great interest among foreign colleagues. It was decided to continue joint research in the future.