Volume 11 Number 1 March 2024

Dear ICTMA friends... .................................................................................................................................... 1
News ............................................................................................................................................................. 1
A meeting with Henry O. Pollak ..................................................................................................................... 2
Report “Das ist die Wahrheit!” ("That's the truth!") – An afternoon with Henry O. Pollak .............................. 2
Recent Dissertation ....................................................................................................................................... 5
Recent Publications of Interest ...................................................................................................................... 5

Dear ICTMA friends...
This first ICTMA newsletter of 2024 provides news related to mathematical modellinginternationally. It also includes a feature report by Rita Borromeo Ferri on a recent meetingwith an icon of mathematical modelling education - Henry Pollak. This newsletter also
provides a list of selected recent publications by ICMTA members in journals and books related
to our field. We would like to thank all colleagues who have contributed to this newsletterwith their comments and texts.

News•

International Mathematical Modelling Challenge competition
Irene Ferrando (Spain) presented a short report on the International Mathematical
Modelling Challenge competition related to the 4th edition of the selection phase held in
Spain, IMMC-Spain (https://immcspain.blogs.uv.es/). Irene is a member of the expert
panel of the international competition. The IMMC organisation will present a discussion
group at the next ICME in Sydney.

•

ICTMA 22 in Linköping, Sweden, August 10-15, 2025
In 1989 the fourth International Conference on Teaching of Mathematical Modelling andApplication (ICTMA4) was held in Roskilde in Denmark. For ICTMA22, in 2025, Jonas
Bergman Ärlebäck and Peter Frejd inviting all researchers, teachers and mathematiciansVolume 11 Number 1 March 20241

interested in the teaching and learning of mathematical modelling and applications toreturn to Scandinavia again – but this time to Sweden and the city of Linköping! An early
research career day and welcome reception are planned for 10 August. The official
academic programme starts on 11 August. https://liu.se/en/article/internationalconference-ictma22•

ICMI Study 27 Conference “Mathematics Education and the Socio-Ecological”
The discussion document is now available for the ICMI Study 27 Conference“Mathematics Education and the Socio-Ecological” which will take place from January 22
to January 26, 2025, in Quezon City, Philippines. https://icmistudy27.sciencesconf.org
The summary dates for the study are as follows.
o 1. Call for proposals (paper submission): from February 2024
o 2. Pre-submission support deadline: May 30, 2024
o 3. Deadline for proposals (paper submission): June 15, 2024
o 4. Invitations to participate mailed: between July 30 and August 15, 2024
o 5. Registration: opens on July 30, 2024, and closes November 1, 2024
o 6. Proceedings published online: December 31, 2024
o 7. Conference Opening: January 22, 2025
The co-chairs of the study are Alf Coles (University of Bristol, UK) and Kate
Leroux (University of Cape Town, South Africa). ICTMA-President Vince Geiger is amember of the organising committee.

•

ACTIO "Constitution of environments for teacher education in mathematicalmodelling"
Emerson Tortola and Karina Alessandra Pessoa da Silva (Brazil) have passed news thatthe Brazilian journal ACTIO has published a call for manuscripts aimed at a thematic issue
on "Building environments for teacher training in mathematical modelling". ACTIO:
Teaching in Sciences, has an A3 classification in the CAPES qualis. The deadline forsubmission of manuscripts is 30 June 2024.

•

CERME 14
CERME 14 will take place in Bolzano (Italy) from 4 to 8 February 2025. The call for
TWG06: Applications and Modelling can be found at https://www.cerme14.it/twgteams/. ICTMA members are invited to participate in TWG06 on mathematical modellingat CERME14, both with papers and in person. The Papers from CERME 13 are available athttps://hal.science/search/index?q=CERME13+Modelling

Feature Report: A meeting with Henry O. Pollak
In the following article, Rita Borromeo Ferri describes a recent meeting with an icon ofmathematical modelling - Henry O. Pollak. Rita travelled to Henry's home in Summit, New
Jersey, during a visit to the USA as part of a collaboration with Teachers College, Columbia
University, and shares a reflection from her fascinating meeting.

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Das ist die Wahrheit! (That's the truth!) – An afternoon with Henry O. Pollak
by Rita Borromeo Ferri

An afternoon with Henry O. Pollak on January 10, 2024, in Summit, New Jersey, USA
New York City on January 10, 2024, I'm in Pennsylvania Station in New York City, waiting formy train to take me to Summit, New Jersey. I don't need an umbrella today. It had rained
heavily the day before and stormed so much that I almost lost my umbrella on the way to
Teachers College across the campus of Columbia University. The umbrella was no use, I was
wet anyway. Yes, Teachers College (TC) is where I always like to go to teach mathematicalmodeling courses. It is thanks to Henry Pollak that mathematical modeling is so important in
the mathematics education faculty at TC. If you haven't been to the TC yet, you should,
because the building is beautiful both inside and out. Admittedly, I have to find the exact
staircase and the right stairway every time, which then at least leads me purposefully to the"Thompson Hall", where mathematics education is located. Henry Pollak's name is also
written on one of the wooden office doors.
Now my platform is called, and I take the escalator down to the train, which is already waiting
there. It takes about 47 minutes to reach Summit in New Jersey. That's where Henry lives. The
train makes a jerky start. I look out of the window for the first 10 minutes and can see themagnificent Manhattan skyline on a clear day, but it gets smaller and smaller and eventuallydisappears. It becomes more rural and as I look into the gardens of the houses along therailroad tracks, I really look forward to the upcoming meeting! Yes, I haven't seen Henry since2016 and now it's 2024. Before I flew to New York City, I contacted Henry and asked him tomeet up. He replied within two days. Not many 96-year-olds would do that, but Henry did. So,
it worked out that I would go to Summit and his wonderful daughter Cathy would pick me up
at the train station and bring me to him. That was very nice! And that's how it turned out. Now
I'm sitting here on the train, looking forward to it. And no, I didn't come up with an interview
guide for the meeting. I know the many very interesting interviews with Henry from around1998, also recorded in Summit. Among other things, Henry talks about his school career inthree different countries, namely Austria, England, and the USA. Or the interview that
Alexander Karp conducted with Henry in 2007. I find this particularly insightful, because it
reveals how Henry became a mathematics educator, although he is an applied mathematician,and then an adjunct professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. So why ask Henry
something that he has actually already answered several times and in great detail. Henry,
Cathy and I want to have lunch together and spend the afternoon chatting. Surely, that's notout of the question, we'll also talk about mathematical modeling. And so we did.
Cathy recognizes me immediately at Summit station and we drive about 20 minutes to herhouse, which is beautifully located. I would have loved to see all this in spring and summer.
We enter the house, turn the corner twice and there's Henry sitting in his room. My firstthought: unbelievable, I want to look that good at 96! Funnily enough, I jumped from English
to German, so: “Hallo Henry, wie geht es Dir? Wir haben uns lange nicht gesehen!” ("Hello
Henry, how are you? We haven't seen each other for a long time!") And he also replies inGerman: “Gut soweit, wie schön, dass wir uns wiedersehen!") “Good so far, how nice to see
you again!" We sit down to lunch in the dining room and talk about all sorts of things, only to
get back to modeling. I tell him that Gloria Stillman received the Henry Pollak Award in 2023,
which he didn't know and was very pleased about, or that the next ICTMA will be in Linköping,
Sweden.
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Henry Pollak with Rita Borrromeo Ferri, January 2024, Summit, New Jersey, USA

Henry told me about modeling examples that he finds interesting, such as how a supermarket
should be optimally arranged so that customers buy the most expensive goods. I showed him
some modeling tasks of mine. He particularly liked this one: 'Model how much energy isconsumed for the air conditioning of the Al Bayt soccer stadium in Qatar during a 90-minuteWorld Cup match. Consider under which conditions Qatar can still meet the claim of a climateneutral World Cup.' Through this exchange, I finally asked Henry what I had always wanted toknow: During your time at Bell Laboratories, was there a situation, or rather THE sparkling
moments, where you realized that mathematical modeling should be taught in school?
We're sitting at the table, lunch is over. I actually have to look at my watch, because there arestill 60 minutes until the train leaves for New York City and it takes 20 minutes to get from thehouse to Summit Station. And I'm asking this complex question, I think! Cathy comes into theroom and says she'll remind us of the time. All right, says Henry, I'll have to be really briefthen, this is a challenge! Rita, now I'll tell you what it was really about these sparkling
moments. Henry starts by telling me, that he was already doing very innovativeinterdisciplinary work at Bell Labs in the 1960s. Only back then, and I see a slight grin flit acrosshis face, the importance of working interdisciplinary wasn't emphasized as much as it is today!
In Bell Labs, people worked on complex problems, Henry continues. Especially when I was ayoung researcher there. Colleagues would come to me and say: "Hey Henry, we've got a mathproblem, can you solve it?" I took the problem back to my room and pondered, told Henry,
these problems were always complex, precisely because they came from different disciplines.
So, what I did was absolutely logical, Henry said, because I went to every single colleague intheir rooms and asked them where this problem actually came from. After a few rounds withmy colleagues, I often realized that the problem was posed incorrectly in context. That is why
the resulting math problem didn't make sense at first. What I ended up doing, Henry's blueeyes sparkle as he says this, so I reformulated the question in the way my colleagues had
probably described it. Then I looked at how I could solve it mathematically. Yes, I solved
problems in a way that hadn't been done before.

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Cathy comes into the room and says that we still have 15 minutes until departure. "We'll makeit," says Henry. He concentrates and continues.
For the complex modeling at that time, I only had the mathematics and digital tools that wereavailable, emphasizes Henry. But I then improved the modeling process, the procedure, more
and more. And I had actually solved a previously unsolved problem at Bell Labs. Then, I
transferred this modeling process into my model of modeling – applicable mathematics andapplied mathematics – starting from a real problem – there's a cycle! This way of working andthinking, together with the interdisciplinarity and my problem-solving skills, that's whatshaped and inspired me at Bell Labs! Those were the sparkling moments you asked for Rita! I
wished for engineering students to become math teachers and for school children to learn
mathematical modeling! That's how it was, “Das ist die Wahrheit!” (“That's the truth!").
The afternoon with Henry and Cathy was lovely. I'm getting a bit cold here at Summit Station
while I wait for my train, which unfortunately arrives 20 minutes late. Almost like the German
railroad system, I think. I warm my hands on my hot coffee mug. As the train gently jolts meback to New York City, I am very glad that I had the chance to see Henry again. Did I tell youthat I brought Henry "Manner"? Manner wafers come from Vienna and are small wafers madefrom cocoa hazelnut cream. They are also available in other flavors. “They're eaten quickly,"
Cathy said when I gave Henry the package.
The train pulls into Penn Station and my two great daughters, who accompanied me to New
York this time, are already waiting for me. "How was your afternoon with Henry?", they both
ask me almost simultaneously. "Wonderful," I say enthusiastically, and “Das ist die Wahrheit!
("That's the truth!")Recent Dissertation•

Sindura Kularajan completed her PhD in mathematics education at Texas State University(Texas, USA) in May 2023. Her dissertation was entitled: “STEM Undergraduates'
Structural Conception of Situational Attributes”. Her committee chair was Jennifer
Czocher.

Recent Publications
Biccard, P. (2024). Productive Struggle in Mathematical Modelling. The Mathematics
Enthusiast, 21(1–2), 99–112. https://doi.org/10.54870/1551-3440.1620
Borromeo Ferri, R., Kaiser, G., & Paquet, M. (2023). Meeting the challenge of heterogeneity
through the self-differentiation potential of mathematical modeling problems. In R.
Leikin (Ed.), Mathematical Challenges For All (pp. 409–429). Springer.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18868-8_22
Borromeo Ferri, R., & Wiegand, S. (2023). Teaching Education for Sustainable
Development—Challenges and Successes of Pre-Service Mathematics Teachers. In M.
Ayalon, B. Koichu, R. Leikin, L. Robel, & M. Tabach (Eds.), Proceedings of the 46th
Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education(Vol. 2, pp. 131–138). PME.
Greefrath, G., & Siller, H.-S. (2024). Editorial: Mathematical modelling through and withdigital resources. Frontiers in Education, 9.
https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2024.1382594
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Haj-Yahya, A., & Klieger, A. (2023). Collaborating with industry to highlight the relevance ofmathematics. Research in Mathematics Education, 1–21.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14794802.2023.2263843
Hallström, J., Norström, P., & Schönborn, K. J. (2023). Authentic STEM education throughmodelling: An international Delphi study. International Journal of STEM Education,10(1), 62. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-023-00453-4
Hartmann, L.-M. (2023). Prozesse beim Problem Posing zu gegebenen realweltlichen
Situationen und die Verbindung zum Modellieren. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43596-7
Hartmann, L.-M., Schukajlow, S., Niss, M., & Jankvist, U. T. (2023). The roles preservice
teachers adopt in modelling-related problem posing. In M. Ayalon, B. Koichu, R. Leikin,
L. Robel, & M. Tabach (Eds.), Proceedings of the 46th Conference of the International
Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (Vol. 3, pp. 19–26). PME.
Kim, Y. R., Yang, J., Lee, Y., & Earwood, B. (2024). Assessing Cybersecurity Problem-Solving
Skills and Creativity of Engineering Students Through Model-Eliciting Activities Using an
Analytic Rubric. IEEE Access, 12, 5743–5759.
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3348554
Krause, M., Greefrath, G., Forthmann, B., Kremer, F. E., Reer, F., Laumann, D., Masemann,D., Denz, C., Heinicke, S., Leibrock, B., Marohn, A., Quandt, T., Souvignier, E., Ubben, M.,& Heusler, S. (2024). Effects of student-owned and provided mobile devices onmathematical modeling competence: Investigating interaction effects with problematic
smartphone use and fear of missing out. Frontiers in Education, 9.
https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2024.1167114
Krawitz, J., Hartmann, L., & Schukajlow, S. (2024). Do task variables of self-generated
problems influence interest? Authenticity, openness, complexity, and students’ interest
in solving self-generated modelling problems. The Journal of Mathematical Behavior,73, 101129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmathb.2024.101129
Krawitz, J., Schukajlow, S., Wiehe, K., & Rakoczy, K. (2023). Experiences of competence andautonomy during a teaching intervention on mathematical modelling. In P. Drijvers, C.
Csapodi, H. Palmér, K. Gosztonyi, & E. Kónya (Eds.), Thirteenth Congress of the European
Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME13). Alfréd Rényi Institute ofMathematics. https://hal.science/hal-04418267
Lopes, A. P. C. E. (2023). Countering the ideology of certainty through reflective knowledge
in mathematical modeling. Bolema: Boletim de Educação Matemática, 37(77), 936–957.
https://doi.org/10.1590/1980-4415v37n77a02
Nguyen, A. T. T., & Tran, D. (2024). Quantitative reasoning as a lens to examine changes inmodelling competencies of secondary preservice teachers. Mathematics Education
Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13394-023-00481-x
Podworny, S., Frischemeier, D., Dvir, M., & Ben-Zvi, D. (Eds.). (2024). Reasoning with data
models and modelling in the big data era: Minerva School 2022. University ofPaderborn. https://doi.org/10.17619/UNIPB/1-1815
Rezaei, J., & Asghary, N. (2024). Teaching differential equations through a mathematicalmodelling approach: The impact on problem-solving and the mathematical
performance of engineering undergraduates. International Journal of MathematicalVolume 11 Number 1 March 2024

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Education in Science and Technology, 1–21.
https://doi.org/10.1080/0020739X.2024.2307397
Schlüter, D., & Besser, M. (2024). Assessing authenticity in modelling test items: Deriving atheoretical model. Frontiers in Education, 9, 1343510.
https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2024.1343510
Segura, C., & Ferrando, I. (2023). Pre-service teachers’ flexibility and performance in solving
Fermi problems. Educational Studies in Mathematics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649023-10220-5
Segura, C., Ferrando, I., & Albarracín, L. (2023). Does collaborative and experiential work
influence the solution of real-context estimation problems? A study with prospective
teachers. The Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 70, 101040.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmathb.2023.101040
Segura Cordero, C., & Ferrando, I. (2023). ¿Qué estrategia es mejor para un problema deFermi? Adaptabilidad de futuros maestros. Enseñanza de las Ciencias. Revista deinvestigación y experiencias didácticas, 41(3), 133–151.
https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/ensciencias.5978
Siller, H.-S., Geiger, V., & Greefrath, G. (2023). The Role of Digital Resources in Mathematical
Modelling in Extending Mathematical Capability. In B. Pepin, G. Gueudet, & J. Choppin(Eds.), Handbook of Digital Resources in Mathematics Education (pp. 1–24). Springer
International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95060-6_18-1
Spooner, K. (2024). What does mathematical modelling have to offer mathematics
education? Insights from students’ perspectives on mathematical modelling.
International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 55(3), 615–
627. https://doi.org/10.1080/0020739X.2021.2009052
Turner, E. E., Bennett, A. B., Granillo, M., Ponnuru, N., Roth Mcduffie, A., Foote, M. Q.,
Aguirre, J. M., & McVicar, E. (2024). Authenticity of elementary teacher designed andimplemented mathematical modeling tasks. Mathematical Thinking and Learning,
26(1), 47–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/10986065.2022.2028225
Vajen, B., & Strømskag, H. (2023). CiviMatics: Interdisciplinary mathematical modellingmeets civic education. https://www.idd.unihannover.de/fileadmin/idd/Projekte/CiviMatics/01_-_EN_CiviMatics_Handbook.pdf
Wiegand, S., & Borromeo Ferri, R. (2023). Promoting pre-service teachers’ professionalism insteam education and education for sustainable development through mathematicalmodelling activities. ZDM – Mathematics Education, 55(7), 1269–1282.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-023-01500-8
Wirth, L., & Greefrath, G. (2024). Working with an instructional video on mathematicalmodeling: Upper-secondary students’ perceived advantages and challenges. ZDM –Mathematics Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-024-01546-2
Zbiek, R. M., Peters, S. A., Galluzzo, B., & White, S. J. (2024). Secondary mathematics
teachers learning to do and teach mathematical modeling: A trajectory. Journal of
Mathematics Teacher Education, 27(1), 55–83. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-02209550-7

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ICTMA The International Community of Teachers of Mathematical Modelling and Applications
EditorGilbert GreefrathUniversity of Münster, Germany
greefrath@uni-muenster.de

President
Vince Geiger
Australian Catholic University
Vincent.Geiger@acu.edu.au

Please send future contributions to the editor by email <greefrath@uni-muenster.de>. The
next newsletter will be published in October 2024. We are interested in your contributions to
any of the current sections including project reports and problems.

Volume 11 Number 1 March 20248