Clements-Foyster invited speaker, 2023
Professor Colleen Vale, Monash University
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The Annual Clements-Foyster Lecture
The Clements-Foyster Invited Speaker is an annual award, established in honour of the two founding members of MERGA in 1976/1977, Professor Ken Clements (then at Monash University), and John Foyster (then based at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)). The first Clements-Foyster lecture was given in 2005, by Professor David Clarke, and since then, each year one Australian, New Zealander or a member from the South East Asian rim countries, is invited to present the Annual Clements-Foyster Lecture.
Colleen Vale Biography
Colleen Vale is professor of mathematics education in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. Equity and social justice in mathematics education is a focus of her research and scholarly activity. She is renowned for her research in gender equity and digital technologies in mathematics education, out-of-field teaching in STEM and learning and teaching mathematical reasoning. She has received a range of research grants that investigate students’ learning, teachers’ practice and knowledge and that evaluate government policies and programs in STEM education. She is currently conducting an ARC Discovery Project titled Primary teachers adaptive expertise in interdisciplinary maths and science.
Colleen’s research interest in out-of-field teachers arose through provision of professional learning programs for teachers in low-socio economic schools when employed at Victoria University. She is a member of the international Teaching across Subjects (TAS) Collective and conducted an ARC Discovery Project Out-of-field Teaching: Sustaining Quality Practices Across Subjects and an international study of systemic factors, Teaching science and mathematics out-of-field: Investigating systemic factors from a transnational perspective with colleagues at Deakin University, QUT, UNE and University of Essen-Duisberg, Germany.
Colleen led a team of researchers to conduct research on primary teachers’ perceptions of mathematical reasoning, primary students’ mathematical reasoning, and primary teachers’ planning that promote and enhance students’ mathematical reasoning to advance the theoretical understandings in the field. The team also conducted a Commonwealth Government funded study of the assessment of mathematical reasoning which included the production of teachers’ resources for reSolve: Mathematics by Inquiry for the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers and the Academy of Science.
Colleen Vale Abstract
Generative teacher practitioners: Enacting adaptive expertise in and beyond the classroom
Much of our mathematics education research has focused on effective teaching practices, yet participation and achievement of Australian students has stagnated and fallen behind other countries of similar standards. Whilst school mathematics leaders, both primary and secondary, support teachers to develop their knowledge and develop whole school approaches much of this work focuses on developing teachers’ routine expertise rather than their adaptive expertise. Research on generative teaching focuses on developing students’ understanding to improve learning, whereas generative teacher practitioners continually seek to improve their understanding and practice of mathematics teaching by learning to be responsive to their students’ mathematics thinking and developing students’ mathematical reasoning and problem solving. They are also responsive to the socio-cultural and gender composition of their classrooms. In this presentation, the relationships between teacher adaptive expertise and generative teacher practitioners along with opportunities for further research will be discussed.
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International Invited speaker, 2023
Professor Rochelle Gutierrez, University of Illinois
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Rochelle Gutierrez Biography
Dr. Gutiérrez’ research interrogates the unearned privilege that mathematics holds in society and the roles that race, class, language, and gender play in teaching/learning mathematics so as to open up new possible relationships between humans, mathematics/science, and the planet.
She has served on a number of national mathematics panels and committees, including most recently the writing team of the Standards for Preparing Mathematics Teachers organized by the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators. Recognized for the work she has conducted and the theories on equity she has offered to the field, she has earned the Excellence in Research Award from the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators; the Innovations in Research in Equity and Social Justice in Teacher Education Award from the American Educational Research Association; Distinguished Educator in the Pedagogy of Success in Urban Schools by Pace University; Circle Holder within Science for the People; featured mathematician in Latinx/Hispanics in the Mathematical Sciences (LATHISMS) and various podcasts including Abolition Science. Her work has been published in such journals as American Educational Research Journal, Mathematical Thinking and Learning, Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Harvard Educational Review, Democracy and Education, Urban Review, and Mathematics Teacher. She recently co-edited the book Rehumanizing Mathematics for Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students.
For the past 25 years, she has been deeply and passionately invested in supporting teachers of mathematics and science to navigate the politics of their local work environments. Her work on Rehumanizing Mathematics and creative insubordination have been used in K-12 settings and university/college mathematics and science departments in the US and beyond. Moreover, she developed the concept Living Mathematx and has argued for a spiritual turn in mathematics education research, which relies on Indigenous perspectives and futures.
Rochelle Gutierrez Abstract
Restor(y)ing mathematics, restor(y)ing ourselves: A spiritual turn in mathematics education
Partly in response to the movements of Black Lives Matter and Land Back on Turtle Island; land and water rights severely threatened globally (e.g., Brazil and India) as well as proposed constitutions and new laws that name lands and waters as persons who have rights (e.g., Bolivia, Australia, and Chile); climate justice; Truth and Reconciliation processes in Canada and South Africa that have major implications for Indigenous education; a queer and trans movement; and a global pandemic that has shifted education to embrace socioemotional learning and care for one another, the global mathematics education community is situated in a unique moment to reconsider mathematics in helping us to get free and heal. In what way(s) are our research projects taking seriously the idea that the (school) mathematics that got us to this moment is not the (school) mathematics that will get us out? What is involved in radically dreaming towards a mathematical future that can help us to re-attach to each other and to our more-than-human relatives, to weave ourselves together? What are the languages needed to describe relations between various mathematics and mathematical forms as well as between various mathematicians? And, in what ways could this work be considered spiritual? In this presentation, I will draw upon the concept of restor(y)ing mathematics to highlight the ways we are engaging in Indigenous futurity and what that says about who we are becoming as researchers and persons.
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International Invited speaker, 2023
Professor Mellony Graven, Rhodes University
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Mellony Graven Biography
Mellony Graven qualified and practiced as a mathematics teacher with a B Sc Ed and B Sc Hons in Mathematics Education from Wits University. She then studied an M Phil at Cambridge University having won a Cambridge Livingstone Trust Scholarship, followed by her PhD at Wits University on teacher learning within an in-service community of practice at the time of radical post-apartheid curriculum change. Since 2011 Mellony has held the SA Numeracy Chair at Rhodes University that focuses on building mathematics education research and development teams working with teachers, parents and learners in primary schools driven. Active citizenship, community engagement and equity are the key drivers of the work. She is a past President of the Southern African Association for Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education; has served on several international conference committees and as editor for books, leading journals and special journal issues.
Mellony has published in areas such as Mathematical Identity, Literacy, Teacher Education and Dispositions. Her more recent work focuses on language, instructional design, number sense, merging maths and literacy, family engagement, and assessment for learning.
Mellony Graven Abstract
Merging Maths research and development: connecting communities in an emergent network local and national projects
Mellony Graven is the incumbent South African Numeracy Chair at Rhodes University in South Africa. This is one of two National Research Foundation Chairs that were explicitly established to merge development with research in the search for sustainable solutions to persistent challenges in South African primary Mathematics education particularly for ‘disadvantaged’ communities. The model of funding, while stipulating at minimum the establishment of professional development programs working with at least ten local school, allowed flexibility. This long term (now in its 12th year) flexible R&D Chair model enabled a grounded organically emerging network of local and national research informed (continually improving) projects. In this talk Mellony will share key aspects of this work since inception with a focus on the Mental Starters Assessment Project that is being implemented nationally with the Department of Basic Education as a means to address an absence of teaching for number sense and persistent unit counting methods of calculating well beyond appropriate number ranges and grades. This program emerged collaboratively from the grounded R&D experiences of the two Numeracy Chairs. The work presented provides an argument for long term funding of research and development in which the outcomes and projects are allowed to flexibly emerge through research and community partnerships rather than being tightly bound by proposal outcomes that predate opportunities for community partners to shape the direction of the work.
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Invited speaker, 2023
Dr Judy-anne Osborn, Monash University
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Judy-anne Osborn Biography
Judy-anne Osborn is a Mathematician whose work spans research and education, including in particular teacher education. Her focus includes a concern for justice-related issues, especially those that intersect with Mathematics and its’ culture. In particular she is interested in understanding what it could mean to Indigenise University Mathematics; and works on this as part of a project involving Indigenous and non-Indigenous Mathematicians and other practitioners around the world – see https://carmamaths.org/iumproject/
Her background is rural Anglo-Australian from country Victoria (Gunaikurnai country). Her undergraduate degree and then PhD in Combinatorial Mathematics were at Melbourne University, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at ANU and the University of Newcastle in computational/combinatorial Mathematics, followed an academic appointment at Newcastle University, during which she also completed a secondary teaching qualification with specialisations in Mathematics and Philosophy. She has recently moved from NSW to the Mathematics Department at Monash University in Victoria.
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Associate Professor Michael Donovan, La Trobe University
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Michael Donovan Biography
Michael Donovan is a member of the Gumbaynggirr Nation and Pro Vice Chancellor Indigenous at La Trobe University. I have been involved in Aboriginal education since 1992, working from schools through to university. Lecturing across a wide variety of Indigenous Studies topics from working with Aboriginal communities, Aboriginal education, and human rights. I am a Life Member of the NSW AECG and have been a community elected board member on various NSW Aboriginal organisations.
I have worked within the Indigenising University Maths community over the last few years and worked closely with Dr Judy-anne Osborne through informing mathematic communities on the journey of reciprocal, collaborative understandings when working through these processes.
Judy-anne Osborn and Michael Donovan Abstract
Collaboration and Partnership; Indigenous mathematics and promoting Justice
We describe the Indigenising University Maths project, which is a long -term collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous practitioners around the world, in this space. We describe some of our conclusions so far in terms of useful possibilities to explore. We indicate how researchers and educators everywhere can help.
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