4TU+.AMI Education Day 2026 on 20 November

Title: Building Thinking Classrooms

Abstract: Building Thinking Classrooms (BTC) is the result of over 20 years of experience and classroom research by Professor Peter Liljedahl (Simon Fraser University, Canada). In a BTC setting, students acquire knowledge and skills through problem-solving. Additionally, the application of these skills is addressed at the end of the learning process, with students receiving explicit instruction in mathematical problem-solving.

Key characteristics of a BTC lesson include: (1) a process of discovery followed by consolidation, clearly guided by the teacher; (2) working while standing at whiteboards in randomly assigned groups of three; (3) actively collaborating within one's group and with other students; and (4) a teacher who primarily asks questions to sustain the thinking process.

During this session, you will participate in a BTC lesson yourself; subsequently, the research background, underlying goals, and methodology will be discussed, giving you insight into the approach and the respective roles of students and the teacher.

About the speaker: Maarten Müller studied Applied Mathematics at the University of Twente, where he completed both a Master’s degree in Mathematics and a Master’s degree in Education. He now has 20 years of secondary school teaching experience and extensive experience delivering BTC training sessions in close collaboration with Professor Peter Liljedahl, the founder of BTC. 

The following Strategic Education Initiatives will be presented:

• Waterproof
• Math & AI Videos
• Linear Algebra, the tile game

Title: What works… for what? Teachers' problems, researchers' problems and the knowledge in between

Abstract: "Sharing what works" is a natural aim for any teaching community. Yet behind it lie three crucial questions: what for, what exactly is the "it", and where does it work? Starting from these questions, this talk explores the relationship between teaching and research in university mathematics. Teachers and researchers face different but equally legitimate problems: how to teach a given content, on the one hand, and how to identify and transform didactic phenomena, on the other. Quite often, both problems live in the same person. Drawing on the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic, I will discuss tools that can connect them: models of the knowledge to be taught and an analysis of the conditions that make teaching practices viable. I will illustrate them with a study and research path on low-emission zones, implemented in statistics courses for engineering students at two schools in Barcelona, where the intervention led students to quite different kinds of statistical work. The talk closes with some proposals for a shared agenda between mathematics teachers and researchers in mathematics education at the undergraduate level.