On February 17-21, 2014, Anna Sfard from the University of Haifa visited Umeå Mathematics Education Research Centre (UMERC). During her visit, she participated in different seminars and worked together with members of UMERC.
Anna Sfard is Professor and head of the mathematics education program in the Department of Education at the University of Haifa. She is affiliated with the University of Michigan, where she was the first Lappan-Phillips-Fitzgerald Professor of Mathematics Education, and she is also affiliated with the Institute of Education, University of London, where she has been the Chair of Mathematics Education and a visiting professor.
In 2007, Anna Sfard was awarded The Hans Freudenthal Medal by the International Commission on Mathematics Instruction,
in recognition of her highly significant and scientifically deep accomplishments within a consistent, long-term research programme focused on objectification and discourse in mathematics education, which has had a major impact on many strands of research in mathematics education and on numerous young researchers.
Her work on issues of objectification in mathematical discourse focuses on those discursive mechanisms that are active when new mathematical objects emerge, and her interest is with the development of discourses both at the individual level and also in the course of history.
Although focusing on mathematics education, the work of Anna Sfard also encompasses aspects of human thinking more generally, where relationships between communication and cognition are in focus. Much of her work on these issues is summarized in her book from 2008: "Thinking as communicating: Human development, the growth of discourses, and mathematizing".
