Towards better regional collaboration in mathematics education

The idea of international collaboration in mathematics education has a long history, and the International Commission for Mathematics Instruction (ICMI) carried out its first survey in 1912. Since then, international collaboration has progressed largely at the level of information exchange via conferences, journal articles and occasional comparative research studies. ICMI held its large and latest four- year Congress in 1992, but increasingly it is holding other conferences of a regional nature. In April 1995 one such regional conference will be held at Monash University. This structure now makes regional collaboration more feasible, and with the help of telecommunications technology, systematic collaboration between centres in neighbouring countries on a regular basis becomes a reality. The questions now are not so much to do with how collaboration can take place, but why, for what reasons, for what benefits, and to whom?

This paper will present the background to, and explore, these issues.