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6th EUROPEAN SUMMER UNIVERSITY
ON THE HISTORY AND EPISTEMOLOGY IN MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
ESU-6
19-23 July 2010,
Vienna, Austria
FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT
The initiative of organizing a Summer University (SU) on the History and Epistemology in
Mathematics Education belongs to the French Mathematics Education community, in the early 1980’s.
From those meetings emerged the organization of a SU on a European scale, as the European Summer
University (ESU) on the History and Epistemology in Mathematics Education, starting in 1993. Since
then, ESU was successfully organized in 1996, 1999, 2004 and 2007 in different places in Europe1. By
now, it has been established into one of the main international activities of the HPM Group, which - from
2010 onwards - will be organized every four years, so that every two years there will take place at least
one major international meeting of the Group; namely, ESU and the HPM Satellite Meeting of ICME.
1. Aim and focus of the ESU
The ESU mainly aims
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to provide a forum for presenting research in mathematics education and innovative teaching
methods based on a historical, epistemological and cultural approach to mathematics and their
teaching, with emphasis on actual implementation,
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to give the opportunity to mathematics teachers, educators and researchers to share their teaching
ideas and classroom experience related to this perspective,
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in this way, to motivate further collaboration along these lines, among members of the mathematics
education community in Europe and beyond, attempting to reveal the following aspects of
mathematics:
• Mathematics should be conceived as a human intellectual enterprise with a long history, a vivid
present and an as yet unforeseen future;
• Although its “polished” products form that part of mathematical knowledge that can be
communicated, criticized (in order to be finally accepted or rejected) and serve as the basis for new
work, the process of “doing mathematics” is equally important, especial