Introduction to the questionnaires

MA²ThE TE AMO – MAking MAThEmatics TEAchers Mobile is an EC Socrates/Comenius 2.1 (Training of School Education Staff) project. The project span is 1/10/2006 – 1/10/2009.

The partner institutions are:

• Centro di Ateneo di Formazione e Ricerca Educativa – Università di Pisa (Italy) – coordinator
• Univerzita Karlova v Praze (Czech Republic)
• Skårup Seminarium (Denmark)
• Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres de Créteil (France)
• Universität Wien (Austria)

The project focuses on furthering mathematics teachers’ mobility by enhancing their confidence in their foreign language competence and thereby reducing their reluctance to be mobile. It takes into account the shortage of mathematics teachers in western countries, “universality” of school mathematics curricula and standards, and the required language and communicative competences necessary for reading and discussing mathematics in a foreign language.

The aim of the project is to prove, by the piloting of the same didactic units in the five partner countries, that it is not difficult to teach mathematics abroad provided that teachers acquire the necessary intercultural communicative competence.

A preliminary analysis has shown the current situation to be:

• in some countries (FR, IT), there is very little or no interaction between teachers of maths and languages;
• in other countries (AT, CZ, DK) student teachers can obtain a joint degree in maths [taught in the mother tongue] and in a foreign language;
• however, nowhere are the student teachers educated to use the foreign language as the medium of instruction in maths.

The two questionnaires aim at getting more precise and complete information on the present situation concerning the above issues. One questionnaire is addressed to mathematics/language in-service teachers and student teachers in secondary schools, the other to mathematics/language teacher trainers.