Report for the academic year - Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

IAS/PARK CITY MATHEMATICS INSTITUTE
PCMI's future plans involve utilizing selected teachers in leadership positions for focused pro-
jects in statistics and in physics and mathematics during the 2001 Summer Session. In par-
ticular, one plan will bring a group of teachers to next year's Summer Session for two weeks'
immersion in the topic of statistics and the review and production of classroom activities,
including the connections to the underlying mathematics. After this two-week immersion,
these teachers will meet for the third week of PCMI with the teacher/co-researchers from
PCMI's Mathematics Education Researchers to discuss best practice for teaching and learn-
ing statistics at the secondary level. The discussions will result in plans for a full-scale pro-
gram in the summer of 2002, leading eventually to the production and classroom testing of a
volume on statistics activities for classroom teachers. This dovetails with a project begun by
the Mathematics Education Research Program at this year's Summer Session, and will result
in contributing to a national agenda for the K-16 teaching of probability and statistics.
The year-round site program for high school teachers continues at the following current
sites: California State University, San Bernardino; Rider University; University of
Cincinnati; and the University of Michigan, Dearborn. All of the PCMI teachers con-
tinue to be active in site groups, either with group activities or with individual presenta-
tions on in-service days or at regional, state, and local chapters of the National Council
of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM).
In November of 1999, two PCMI alumni teachers traveled to Portugal to speak at the
Portuguese National Mathematics Educators conference. These teachers gave a presen-
tation on Transformational Geometry and a workshop on Non-euclidean Geometry.
Both presentations were translated for the Portuguese audience.
In the Continuing Outreach Program, the alumni sites remain active. Most notably, the
University of Washington site group will sponsor its 6 th annual residential geometry
institute for teachers in the Pacific Northwest, the Duke University alumni site contin-
ues to sponsor an annual multi-day workshop for geometry teachers, and the Rice School
Mathematics Project, supported by the PCMI Rice University site, continues to run
strong programming in Houston, Texas.
The teachers of PCMI report a renewed sense of enthusiasm and a new confidence in
teaching from their participation in PCMI. This renewed enthusiasm is carried back to
their classrooms, to their colleagues through the in-service teacher enhancement projects
they lead, and to the hundreds of students they teach.
Mathematics Education Research Program
The Mathematics Education Research Program met for five days during the first week of
PCMI this year. The program was organized by Joan Ferrini-Mundy of Michigan State
University, Timothy Kelly of Hamilton College and Richard Lehrer of the University of
Wisconsin. Professor Ferrini-Mundy most recently chaired the writing group of the Stan-
dards and Principles for School Mathematics for the National Council of Teachers of Math-
ematics. There were 12 distinguished researchers and statisticians in the Mathematics
Education Research Program, and the focus of their work is to determine curriculum and
best practice for K-16 education in probability and statistics. This project will continue
through the 2000-2001 academic year, with an additional meeting of all participants in
January of 2001. At least two journal publications will be the result of the initial phase
of this project.
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