Advances in mathematics education: new book series connected to ZDM—The International Journal on Mathematics Education

Abstract

A new monograph series ‘‘Advances in Mathematics Education’’ has just been established which builds on the tradition and history of the international journal ‘‘ZDM— The International Journal on Mathematics Education’’. One characteristic of ZDM since its inception in 1969 has been the publication of themed issues that aim to bring the stateof-the-art on central sub-domains within mathematics education. The published issues include a rich variety of topics and contributions that continue to be of relevance today. The newly established monograph series edited by Gabriele Kaiser and Bharath Sriraman aims to integrate, synthesize and extend papers from previously published themed issues of importance today, by orienting these issues towards the future state-of-the-art. The main idea is to move the field forward with a book series that looks to the future by building on the past by carefully choosing viable ideas that can fruitfully mutate and inspire the next generations. So, it is our attempt to create something new for the field by making useful combinations of existing ideas with those that are considered to be at the frontiers of the field of mathematics education research today, to carefully select from the past and cross-fertilize ideas across generations with the hope of producing something relevant, forward oriented, synthetic and innovative. The series is supported by an editorial board of internationally distinguished scholars, who bring in their long experience in the field as well as their expertise to this series. The members of the editorial board are: Ubiratan D’Ambrosio (Brazil), Miriam Amit (Israel), Jinfa Cai (USA), Helen Forgasz (Australia), and Jeremy Kilpatrick (USA). The inaugural monograph has already been released in 2010 edited by Bharath Sriraman and Lyn English with the title ‘‘Theories of mathematics education: Seeking New Frontiers’’. The first book in this series on Theories of Mathematics Education provides a prototype of the book series. Theories of Mathematics Education carries forward and consolidates the work and voices of four generations of mathematics education researchers. The book’s inspiration lies in the work of Hans-Georg Steiner’s (1928–2004) international study group called Theory of Mathematics Education (TME) which had held five international conferences until 1992, and offered a regular topic study group at the quadrennial International Congress of Mathematics Education (ICME) until the turn of the last century at which point activity seemed to cease. The editors of the book (Sriraman and English) revived the activity of this group at the 2005 Annual meeting of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (IGPME) in Melbourne, in a research forum focussed on theories. Five years later, substantial work on theories has been accomplished by numerous groups and researchers around the world, in unexpected, surprising and fruitful directions such as complexity theory and the neurosciences. This includes sustained collaborative work by participants from the 2005 PME forum that resulted in two ZDM issues on theories in 2005 and 2006, in addition to work on theories at subsequent Congresses of the European Society for G. Kaiser (&) Didactics of Mathematics, Faculty of Education, University of Hamburg, Von-Melle-Park 8, 20146 Hamburg, Germany e-mail: gabriele.kaiser@uni-hamburg.de