A Joint Action to Reshape Mathematics Education in the French Community of Belgium

Abstract

In the late 1970s, a “reform of the reform” was launched in the French Community of Belgium, more modestly and receiving less media attention than the modern mathematics revolution of the 1960s. It was the time of a new generation of mathematics educators with Nicolas Rouche as a main figurehead. They pleaded, among other things, for students’ guided construction of knowledge by confronting them with substantial problem situations that can give meaning to concepts and theorems prior to their mathematical conceptualization, and for a global and coherent view on mathematics education “from kindergarten to university.” Several small working groups of teachers and mathematics educators were established, among them the Groupe d’Enseignement Mathematique, preceding the creation in 1992 of the Centre de Recherche sur l’Enseignement des Mathematiques, an institute for the study and development of mathematics education that joined actors from all educational levels and networks in the French Community of Belgium.