The Delta 09 conference at Gordon’s Bay South Africa: 30 Nov - 4 Dec 2009

Summary and impressions

With the title Mathematics in a Dynamic Environment, the Seventh Southern Right Conference on the Teaching and Learning of Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics, Delta 09, was held at Gordon’s Bay near Cape Town, South Africa. Its predecessor in southern Patagonia, Argentina was at 50° South probably the most southerly mathematical conference ever, but Gordon’s Bay proved to be an excellent well positioned site facing south-west with the long flat beach of False Bay to the west and smartly rising stark mountains to the east. For much of the time the weather was good and settled though the Cape Doctor south-east wind blew with great regularity and bracing effect. Gordon’s Bay is to the east of the Cape Town conurbations with Stellenbosch and the very pretty vineyards in mountain meadow country only a short distance inland. Further to the east is the ocean coast and Hermanus famous for its whale watching. The delegates were on the Wednesday privileged to take a trip on the sea to see the whales at first hand and we were somewhat lucky as by early December many whales have already departed to the south. There were sharks on view as well and one of them was snapped in classic Jaws pose by an alert delegate.

Beginning in Australia in 1999 the Delta conferences are a regular biennial event held in late November, hitherto in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Argentina and most recently at Gordon’s Bay, South Africa. Themes are based upon learning mathematics and statistics at undergraduate level, both for specialist mathematics students, and student teachers and other key users such as engineers. Their remit is however somewhat wider than that at UK national conferences such as the IMA Mathematical Education of Engineers, with a greater emphasis on pedagogy. There were close to 100 abstracts or equivalent contributions, with some authors being listed three or four times, with papers presented in both plenary and parallel sessions. The aim here is look at some of the themes and a few of the contributions but everybody who took part made the event the great success it turned out to be.

As with past Delta conferences, some of the major contributed papers were presented to the participants on arrival, having already been published in the International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology (IJMEST) in a special issue. In an editorial foreword Greg Oates (University of Auckland, NZ) and Johann Engelbrecht (University of Pretoria, SA) set out some of the major themes. We will be looking at some of these shortly but the Special Issue of 12 papers began with Eric Muller (Brock University, Canada) who noted that the conference theme should be reflected in the qualities needed to build a dynamic university mathematics department. Of the others Patricia Cretchley (Queensland University of Technology, Australia), examining the promotion of teaching and learning, or T & L activity, within Australian universities, noted that there are still entrenched attitudes in academia with regard to the very limited value and esteem with which T & L is held with respect to more traditional research…