Chair commencement date: January 2010

Relevance of research: The South African mathematics education crisis manifests itself on many levels. These are political, epistemological and pedagogical. It is however most strongly felt in the classroom. The research that we are doing aims to provide solutions to make the mathematics classroom more accessible, real and inspiring. We aim to achieve this by specifically researching how visualization processes in mathematics teaching and learning can be used to improve the teaching of mathematics and thus ensure epistemological access. Our research focus falls into four clusters, namely: Visualization as a pedagogy, Visualization and cognition, Visualization as a key mathematical construct, Visualization as a medium for epistemological access.

DST/NRF SARChI Chair for Mathematics Education SARCHi Mathematics Education Chair

Department of Education Professor Marc Schafer