Problem Solving in Mathematics Instruction and Teacher Professional Development

Patricio Felmer is a mathematician working at the University of Chile, specialized in the area of Partial Differential Equations. During the last ten years, he has steadily moved towards Mathematics Education, working in projects for the Chilean government on the definition of Standards for the Formation of Mathematics Teachers and on the development of material for them. In the last years, he has been working in R&D projects with the aim of implementing professional development strategies for in-service teachers based on problem solving. In this direction, he is leading ARPA Initiative, an independent program for introducing problem solving in Chilean Classrooms through professional development of teachers teaching mathematics in all levels, preschool, primary, secondary and tertiary education.

Peter Liljedahl is a Professor of Mathematics Education in the Faculty of Education and an associate member in the Department of Mathematics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He is the coordinator of the MSc and PhD Program in Mathematics Education and is a co-director of the David Wheeler Institute for Research in Mathematics Education at Simon Fraser University. More globally, Dr. Liljedahl is the current president of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. Dr. Liljedahl serves on the editorial boards of ESM, JMTE, MTL, FMEJ, MERJ, and CJSMTE and is a senior editor of IJSME. He has authored or co-authored 7 books, 17 book chapters, 26 journal articles, and over 50 conference papers. Dr. Liljedahl is also a member of the executive of the British Columbia Mathematics Teachers Association (BCAMT) and former co-editor of their flagship journal, Vector. Dr. Liljedahl is a former high school mathematics teacher who has kept his research interest and activities close to the classroom. His research interests are creativity, insight, and discovery in mathematics teaching and learning; the role of the affective domain on the teaching and learning of mathematics; the professional growth of mathematics teachers; mathematical problem solving; numeracy; and engaging student thinking. He consults regularly with schools, school districts, and ministries of education on issues of teaching and learning, assessment, and numeracy.

Boris Koichu is an Associate Professor at the Department of Science Teaching of the Weizmann Institute of Science. His research focus is on learning for and through mathematical problem solving and problem posing, with special focus on the interplay of cognitive, affective and situational factors involved. Prof. Koichu is an author of about a hundred of papers published in peer-reviewed journals, edited books and peer-reviewed conference proceedings, and a co-editor of a book on mathematical creativity and giftedness. He is an editorial board member of Journal of Mathematical Behavior and International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education. He alsoserves as a member of the Education Committee of the European Mathematical Society. Koichu received his M.Sc. in mathematics from Lviv State University, Ukraine, in 1991, and his Ph.D. in mathematics education from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, in 2004. Following two-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of California, San Diego, he joined the faculty of the Technion in 2006. Boris Koichu has been an academic advisor of 13 Ph.D. students and a PI of several research projects funded by the Israel Science Foundation and the Ministry of Education of Israel. He moved to the Weizmann Institute of Science in March 2017 and is currently working on a new project entitled TRAIL - Teacher-Researcher Alliance for Investigating Learning.