There will be four plenary lectures from invited speakers. Each lecturer will have 50-60 minutes for their presentation. There will be time left for questions and comments from the audience after all plenary sessions.
The plenary speakers for PME 49 are:
Mathematical Making and Sense-Making: Digital and AI literacy "in the Making"
Oi-Lam Ng is Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She completed her PhD in Mathematics Education at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Oi-Lam’s research interests address the new ways of doing, communicating, and representing school mathematics as afforded by technology innovations, e.g. technology-enhanced mathematics learning, constructionist pedagogies, computational thinking education, and multimodality in mathematics discourse. Her interests are rooted in advancing a Papert-inspired conception of “Learning as Making,” and the new opportunities it entails for engaging learners in constructionist practices with emergent technologies (e.g. 3D printing, programming, touchscreen applications, and AI). Her research has been published in top-tier journals in mathematics education, STEM education and educational technology, and she is currently Associate Editor of Digital Experience of Mathematics Education. Her service to the local community includes serving in the Hong Kong Curriculum Development Council–Committee on Mathematics Education.
Grounding Mathematics in Perceptually Guided Action: From Sensorimotor Entrainment to Disciplinary Discourse
With a background in Music Performance (Jerusalem Academy), Cognitive Psychology (Tel Aviv University), and the Learning Sciences (Northwestern University), Professor Dor Abrahamson evaluates the purchase of the embodied turn in the Cognitive Sciences on the theory and practice of mathematics education. A design-based researcher working with a range of digital technologies, Dor directs the Embodied Design Research Laboratory (est. 2005) at the University of California Berkeley. Drawing on enactivist philosophy, sociocultural theory, and complex-dynamic systems, and using mixed analytic methods, the lab conducts microgenetic investigations of students’ multimodal task-oriented interactions with peers and artifacts. Focusing on populations of neuro-, sensorimotor, and cultural diversity, the lab has created with their international collaborators award-winning artifacts that enable students to ground new concepts in their basic evolutionary capacity. The lab’s research paradigm, embodied design, elucidates how, when, and why students will endorse cultural forms as enhancing their own implicit perceptuomotor know-how.
Mathematics and the human brain - the physiological basis of learning
PhD Minna Huotilainen is Professor of Educational Sciences at University of Helsinki. Her background is in neuroscience, and she has studied perception, learning, memory and attention in individuals of all ages from infants to old age. She is using neuroscientific methods to understand the physiological basis of successful learning. Her work highlights the importance of physical activity and sleep as well as the benefits of using music as a teaching method. Neuroscientific view helps us understand how good physiological states - peaceful, positive, curious, creative - can contribute to learning cognitively demanding content knowledge.
From Gaze to Guidance: Bridging Eye Tracking and AI to Understand and Support Mathematical Learning
Maike Schindler is a Full Professor of Mathematics in Special Education and Inclusion at the University of Cologne, Germany. She earned her PhD in Mathematics Education from the Technical University of Dortmund, Germany, where she focused on philosophy and theoretical perspectives in mathematics education. During her postdoctoral work at Örebro University, Sweden, she began exploring the potential of eye tracking—the recording and analysis of students’ eye movements—as a method for investigating the learning and teaching of mathematics.
Since then, Professor Schindler has conducted numerous studies and published broadly on the use of eye tracking to examine her core research interests, including mathematical creativity, learning difficulties in mathematics, and special educational needs in mathematics. Her research is characterized by a transdisciplinary approach, integrating methods and insights from fields such as artificial intelligence (AI). For instance, she applies AI techniques to analyze large-scale eye-tracking datasets.
Another major focus of her work lies in the development of digital and adaptive learning systems and applications that support mathematics learning among school students—an area in which both eye tracking and AI play central roles.
The Plenary Panel will be held according to the Oxford-Style debate protocol on a topic related to the theme of the conference 'Sensing and making sense of mathematics'.
Dr Mamokgethi Phakeng is a Chair of the plenary panel for PME49.
The panel for PME 49 consists of the following researchers:
Dr Man Ching Esther Chan is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Education and a Co-Leader of the International Community for Classroom Research (ICCR) Hub at The University of Melbourne, Australia. She is a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society (APS) College of Educational and Developmental Psychologists (FCEDP).
A psychologist by training, Esther has been involved in multiple international projects in mathematics education. The Social Unit of Learning project examined student-student interactions during collaborative problem-solving in mathematics in Australia and China. The Learning from Lessons project investigated the knowledge construction process of mathematics teachers in Australia, China, and Germany.
Esther's current research focuses on understanding the role that research methodology and research discourse play in the day-to-day professional practice and learning of teachers and educational and developmental psychologists. She is currently leading two research projects investigating teacher in-the-moment decision-making using classroom video research methodology and computer-assisted quantitative analysis (multimodal learning analytics).
Esther served on the IGPME International Committee (IC)/the Board of Trustees in the Secretary Portfolio between 2018 and 2020. She is currently on the Editorial Board of Educational Studies in Mathematics (ESM).
David Maximiliano Gomez is an engineer, neuroscientist, and teacher-in-training who works as a Full Professor at the Institute of Education Sciences of Universidad de O'Higgins, located in Rancagua, Chile. His research interests lie in the interfaces between neuroscience, cognitive psychology, numerical cognition, mathematics education, and mathematics. He specializes in quantitative research on topics including rational number understanding, cognitive predictors of mathematics learning, early math skills development, and gender biases and gaps in mathematics education. He has served as Vice President of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (IGPME), a member of the program committees of three international conferences, and an editorial board member of several education and mathematics education journals.
Anna Shvarts is an Assistant Professor at the Freudenthal Institute, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, with a PhD from Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia. She combines expertise in cultural-historical psychology, cognitive science, and mathematics education with an interest in philosophy of science and cognition. Anna explores the micro-dynamics of mathematical problem-solving and student–teacher interaction using (dual) eye-tracking, and designs innovative high-, low-, and hybrid technologies for learning mathematics with your hands. Her findings led to the development of a functional dynamic systems approach – a radical embodied perspective that theorizes mathematical cognition as a natural continuation of living matter. Her educational designs can be found at
With her theoretical and design contributions, Anna strives to make mathematics learning accessible for everyone, joyful, and creative.
Wes Maciejewski received his PhD in mathematical biology at Queen’s University, Canada, in 2012. He then moved on to the University of British Columbia to work in the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative, held a short-term faculty position in the mathematics education unit at the University of Auckland, and an associate professorship in mathematics education at San José State University, California. To round off his varied career in mathematics education, he is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Elementary Education degree at the University of Alberta. His research interests remain varied, but have recurringly focused on flexibility and future-thinking in problem solving, and generally speculating about what is possible in a future mathematics education.
National presentation... (to be announced soon)