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ALM is an international research forum bringing together researchers and practitioners in adult mathematics/numeracy teaching and learning in order to promote the learning of mathematics by adults.
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ALM Bulletin: September 2024
Welcome to another bi-monthly bulletin! This time we introduce two new ALM trustees, provide updates on regular ALM activities and bring reports from ALM members on other events of interest. There is also sad news about a previous ALM Chair, who passed away this summer. Although not personally acquainted, for me, the unexpected loss of a talented and inspirational former Chair prompts thoughts about how we can all make our own unique contributions - to ALM and to the wider world we live in.
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The trustees are aware of various national and international projects of relevance to ALM, past and present, but would be interested to hear from anyone involved in new research projects, especially those involving international collaboration. Please do let us know if you are involved in relevant projects, conferences or professional exchanges such as those featured in this bulletin so we can share these. You can either email me at chair@alm-online.net or send a short draft article for the bulletin to linda.jarlskog@lund.se.
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One item you might notice is missing from this bulletin is an announcement about our next ALM conference. Plans have been underway for some time for a face-to-face conference in 2025, but we are still awaiting confirmation from the prospective hosts. Once confirmed, information will be sent out in a separate announcement.
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New Trustees
In July at the Annual General Meeting, we welcomed two trustees: Trude Sundtjønn and Marcus Jorgensen. They have kindly provided brief introductions to themselves below.
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Trude Sundtjønn is an associate professor at OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University. She works as a teacher educator, mainly in primary teacher education. She is especially interested in mathematics for vocational education for young people. Her doctoral study focused on the experiences of vocational students when they worked on vocationally connected mathematics tasks.
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Marcus Jorgensen is a professor emeritus from Utah Valley University (UVU) where he taught tertiary preparation courses (developmental mathematics) and quantitative literacy. He also served as Director of Institutional Effectiveness and Planning at UVU and, previously, as Dean of Computing,
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Mathematics, and Science at Spokane Falls Community College. Marcus’ research interests include the higher education mathematics curriculum (particularly in General Education courses) and the misuse of numbers in deceptive political claims. He has been involved in ALM since 2008 and previously served as a Trustee and as Secretary. His pre-mathematics education career was as an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard.
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Dr Chris Klinger - former Chair of ALM
It was with sadness that we heard about the loss of Dr Chris Klinger, who passed away unexpectedly on Sunday 28th July. Chris was Chair of ALM for 4 academic years between the Melbourne and Auckland conferences (2008 – 2012). Since retiring from his academic work, Chris reinvigorated his love for music and formed a band – Dr Chris & the Redeemers. His band mates note that:
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Chris pushed himself through a debilitating lung condition to record our album, Stone Cold Redemption, and very soon after he received a lifesaving double lung transplant. His recovery was not easy with many ups and downs, but he constantly battled to get well enough to return to the stage.
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Our condolences go to his wife and family. His music however lives on and can be heard here.
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Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe (EPALE)
EPALE is a European, multilingual, open membership community of adult learning professionals, including adult educators and trainers, guidance and support staff, researchers and academics, and policymakers. EPALE is funded by the Erasmus+ Programme. It is part of the European Union’s strategy to promote more and better learning opportunities for all adults.
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EPALE provides an electronic platform for sharing experiences from events such as conferences and Erasmus+ exchanges. Both links below refer to documents available on the digital platform.
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The first link here leads you to a short report on the ALM30 conference in Limerick (2023) written by Tina Dulam: Worldwide attention for numeracy in a changing world: 2023 Adults Learning Mathematics conference in Ireland.
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The second link here takes you to a report by Linda Jarlskog entitled Impressions from an Erasmus+ exchange in Ireland, which is about a visit she made with colleagues to Catherine Byrne (Ireland) in the framework of the Erasmus+ Programme. Both Linda and Catherine are ALM trustees, and the visit focused on how teaching mathematics can be implemented in a prison and at a centre for young people, Youthreach.
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About ICME15
The International Congress on Mathematical Education, ICME, is the largest international conference on mathematics education in the world and is held every fourth year. This year was the 15th ICME, and was hosted in Sydney, Australia in July 2024. The overarching theme was appropriate for ALM: "ICME-15: Come and be counted!"
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A highlight in the programme was Iddo Gal’s plenary talk "What does it mean to prepare our graduates for adult life? Perspectives from statistics education and adult numeracy". Here he discussed how mathematics educators can understand and prepare graduates for real-world adult practices, develop criticality and a critical stance, and build graduates’ capacity to be critical consumers of authentic texts. His talk really highlighted the importance of numeracy and that mathematics is more than a school subject. The plenary was engaging and well attended.
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The relevant Topic Study Group for ALM members was TSG 5.7 “Mathematics education in and for work; lifelong mathematics education including adult education”, chaired by Javier Díez-Palomar. We had great discussions on task design, mathematics’ place in sustainable development, professional development of teachers of adult numeracy and the mathematics skills needed for different workplaces.
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ALM International Journal
The editorial team are currently working on a new journal issue so please watch out for this. Meanwhile you can read previous issues and three “online first” articles here, including the two new papers mentioned in the July bulletin:
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Anagnostopoulou, E. (2024). Digital Role-Playing Games as a Novel Approach to Learning Mathematics: a Quantitative Analysis.
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Wiik, A. & Vos, P. (2024). Making sense of journalistic COVID-19 data visualizations: An in-depth study of two adults visual-numeric literacy.
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ALM seminars and presentations on YouTube
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ALM is planning a new virtual seminar series for 2024/25 but please remember that you can enjoy watching previous webinars and keynote presentations from ALM conferences on our YouTube channel.
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Are you interested in hosting a future ALM conference?
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The ALM trustees are keen to spread ALM conferences around the world and would welcome new partners for future conferences. If you might be interested in hosting an ALM conference in the future or would just like to have a chat about what this might involve, please contact Diane Dalby at chair@alm-online.net.
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ALM Membership
As a charitable organisation, ALM depends entirely on its members for financial support and all the work done by the trustees or other members is voluntary. By becoming a member, you support ALM to maintain a public presence, to host seminars and conferences, and to provide conference bursaries for emerging researchers and practitioners as the extent of our funds allow. If you are not already a member of ALM, then please consider joining our international community where you can benefit from sharing knowledge and experiences with colleagues from across the world including leading figures in mathematics education research, policy and practice, numeracy practitioners and postgraduate researchers.
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If you are not yet a member, you can join by clicking on the following link and paying a small annual fee.
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If you are already a member, please could you make sure that you have updated your annual payment to match the fees on the ALM website and moved the date of your annual payment to January.
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If you are unsure about your membership status, or have any other queries, you are very welcome to contact ALM Membership Secretary at membership@alm-online.net.
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Future bulletins
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We hope that you are enjoying the regular ALM bulletin. If you have news from your part of the world that may be of interest to our international community then please do get in touch with Linda Jarlskog by linda.jarlskog@lund.se or send her a short draft item for the next bulletin by November 1st, 2024.
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Privacy Policy
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We do not send advertisements. We do not send data to third parties. Your membership data are stored offline. You can always ask to have your data removed permanently by sending a request to the membership secretary.
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By subscribing to the ALM-bulletin or by joining ALM, you agree to our Privacy Policy
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