Conference Report…The DELTA ’07 conference at El Calafate, Argentina: Nov 26th-30th 2007 – summary and impressions

With the title Vision and Change for a New Century, the Sixth Southern Hemisphere Conference on Mathematics and Statistics Teaching and Learning, DELTA ’07, was held at El Calafate near the World Heritage Los Glaciares National Park, Santa Cruz in southern Patagonia, Argentina….The Delta conferences began in 1997 in Australia and are regular biennial event held in late November, hitherto in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and most recently at El Calafate. The main theme is that of learning mathematics and statistics at undergraduate level, both for specialist mathematics students and other key users such as engineers, but there is greater emphasis on pedagogy than might be the case at UK national conferences such as the Undergraduate Mathematics Teaching Conference (UMTC) or the IMA Mathematical Education of Engineers. Nonetheless UMTC/IMA related issues receive proper attention. Over 40 very varied papers were presented, both plenary and contributed, the latter being held mainly in parallel session, so the plan here is to pick up on some of the main overlapping themes and relate these in context. In a short overview such as this it is possible only to mention some and not all of those who contributed, but the event would not have been the success it was without the participation of everyone who took part…