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Culturally adapted mathematics education with ActiveMath

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Abstract

Although it may seem that mathematics education material does not need any enculturation, the opposite is true. We report the results of a case study in several European countries and describe the different dimensions in which mathematics educational material has to be adapted to the cultural context of the learner. We describe the knowledge representation and mechanisms through which the user-adaptive learning platform ActiveMath realizes those adaptations to the language, countries, and communities of practice.

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Notes

  1. http://dublincore.org .

  2. The IEEE LOM standard had defined a set of values for this element which was later discarded, since there was no set of possible values approved that satisfies curricular wishes of all countries.

  3. Velocity is a framework that allows rendering parts of a Web page dynamically, similar to JSP. For instance, it can be used to insert the user’s name in a welcome page.

  4. http://www.imsproject.org/question/.

  5. Assimilation is the process by which new experiences are incorporated into existing mental structures. Accommodation is the process by which existing mental structures are modified to adapt to new experiences according to Jean Piaget.

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Acknowledgments

This publication was supported by funding from the EU for the projects LeActiveMath (FP6-507826) and ActiveMath-EU (2006-4533/001-ELEB14) and Intergeo (ECP-2006-EDU-410016). We thank our partners who indicated the cultural differences in the first place. We also thank Jürgen Schmitt from Klett-Verlag for his input about variability in the regions of German Federal States. For additional aspects to be presented, we like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, 66123, Saarbruecken, Germany

    Erica Melis & Paul Libbrecht

  2. University of Saarland, 66123, Saarbruecken, Germany

    Giorgi Goguadze

  3. Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Carsten Ullrich

Authors
  1. Erica Melis
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  2. Giorgi Goguadze
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  3. Paul Libbrecht
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  4. Carsten Ullrich
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Correspondence to Erica Melis.

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Melis, E., Goguadze, G., Libbrecht, P. et al. Culturally adapted mathematics education with ActiveMath . AI & Soc 24, 251–265 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-009-0215-4

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