RME is undeniable a child of its time. So all the issues which concern
the community of mathematics education world-wide also affect the Dutch
mathematics education community. As a consequence, you will certainly recognize
a lot of similarities with your own agenda for further development. On
the other hand, however, there might also be some dissimilarities.
To start with the overview:
* As mentioned is the issue of looking for ways of assessment that
are in tune with our new approach to teaching.
Besides this topic there are more progressions to specify:
* Our greatest concern now is the implementation of RME teaching methods
in classroom practice. For this reason professionalization of teachers
and classroom research have a high priority. One of things we are working
on is a course for teachers who want to become a mathematics co-ordinator
at their school.
Besides this form of vertically organized teacher enhancement, efforts
are also made to set up a network of teachers, including a website, for
instance, for sharing ideas on teaching activities. Such a network can
be regarded as a horizontally organized opportunity for teacher enhancement.
In both forms, the earlier mentioned blueprints for longitudinal learning/teaching
trajectories can play a key role.
* Constitutive input for further development is also coming from in-dept studies on how learning takes place in classrooms. In these studies the perspectives of both the individual learner and the learning community in a classroom are dealt with. In the first perspective the leading question is: how does a student come to understanding and what is the role of contexts and models? In the second one the questions to be answered are: what constitutes a learning community, and what is the role of the teacher and students in class?
* Another issue which is on our agenda for further development is the
content of mathematics as a school subject. Within RME, there are still
many questions about what is worthwhile to teach children and how particular
content can best be taught, including the use of computers and ICT. Including
these new media, however, does not mean that we already have clear thoughts
about, for instance, the role of the calculator in primary school mathematics.
This certainly will be one of the themes that need further elaboration.
Of course this will be done in connection with the issue of numeracy which
in its turn cannot be separated from mental arithmetic, estimation and
doing algorithms.
Another content issue is geometry. Within this domain a lot of questions
need to be answered about what to include in the primary school curriculum.
In any case not the formal geometry that can be found in many mathematics
curricula around the world.
A relatively new development within the number strand is the attention
which is now devoted to the question regarding the role of practising in
RME, like practising computational skills and number facts.
* Linked with this is the increased focus on vertical mathematization. Compared to several years ago, when the emphasis was strongly on solving problems within a real-life context, the two forms of mathematization are now becoming more and more balanced. Evidence for this can be found in the intensifying attention for problems within a mathematical context, mathematical investigations, and the so-called ‘productive practising’ (this means practising by means of student-generated problems). In a way this process towards a better balance between the two forms of mathematization is a topic which exceeds the elaborations in the field of the mathematical content. It is rather a progression that touches the heart of RME more in general.
* As a last point of progress we may consider the more differentiated attention for specific groups of students, like immigrants’ children — and more in general — special-needs students, but also adults with poor schooling who want to repair their shortage, and finally girls, who in The Netherlands have significantly lower achievement scores in mathematics than boys. Developmental research which is focused on particular populations of students is rather new in RME. Take for instance the gender issue. Probably we are the last country in the world in which on primary school level the differences in achievements between boys and girls were investigated. The same is true for developmental research aimed at students who have difficulties with mathematics. In this respect two important studies are now on the research agenda of the Freudenthal Institute: in one study a special-needs program, called ‘Jumping ahead’ (Menne, 1996/1997/1998), is being developed for early graders who are weak in mathematics; and in the other study the difficulties which immigrants’ children meet in mathematics in the beginning grades of secondary school are investigated (Van den Boer, 1997).