ICSE Consortium Introduced: The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) was inaugurated in 1837 and is the largest state institution of higher learning in Greece, and among the largest universities in Europe. It is a public university with 43 departments, more than 200 postgraduate programs 2100 academic staff members and about 40000 undergraduate students. NKUA takes the 275^th place in World University Rankings (CWUR) (2022-23 Edition). The Mathematics Department, the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Informatics and Telecommunications and Physics make up the NKUA’s School of Science.

The Mathematics Department

The Mathematics Department collaborates with research teams from other European Universities through Erasmus+ and other European projects. During the last two decades about 300 practicing secondary school teachers have collaborated with the Department of Mathematics in various projects and actions. At the same time around 300 prospective teachers received a master’s degree from the Department and they have established a scientific society (Scientific Association for Mathematics Education) that undertakes various activities, e.g., seminars and networking events.

Graduate Mathematics students will pursue a career either in the educational sector or in the industry/research areas. Thus, educating them to be prepared to work with scientific models as well as developing their competences on STEM fields is one of the essential objectives of this department and further endeavours will be supported strongly allowing sustainable use of the project results. Consortium members of the Mathematics Departments are highly experienced in developing concepts on mathematics and science in workplace contexts and how they can be integrated in mathematics and science education.

NKUA is one of the 13 founding member institutions of the ICSE consortium. They started to cooperated with University of Education in Freiburg from 2013 onwards during the Mascil project. This cooperation continued through NKUA’s participation in other international projects such as the IncluSMe Project (2016-2019), the GEM Project (2020-2022), the ENSITE Project (2019-2022) and recently the Teacher Academy Project.

About the Cooperation with ICSE the NKUA Team values:

• the interaction with various participants having diverse scientific and research expertise
• the developmental work for teaching and teacher education including innovative tasks, materials and approaches for classroom teaching and teacher’ professional development
• the integration of STEM perspective in teaching and research
• the challenging themes of research and development initiatives

Fo the future, the team envisions a continuation of collaboration in other projects with ICSE; the enhancement of the research character of our joint activities; teacher engagement in international PD activities; projects / activities involving both prospective and practicing teachers; development of European teacher collaboration in online PD settings; integrated STEM approaches in mathematics and science teacher education.

Despina Potari is professor in the Mathematics Department of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her research interest is on the development of mathematics teaching and learning and teacher development. Her current focus is on macro and micro aspects of mathematics teaching and on mathematics teacher collaboration.

Giorgos Psycharis is associate professor in the Mathematics Department of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His fields of interest include the design of learning environments for mathematics with the use of digital technologies, mathematical modelling, and mathematics teacher education (prospective / practicing teachers, teacher educators).

Chrissavgi Triantafillou is assistant professor in the Mathematics Department of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her fields of interest include connections between mathematics in school and in workplace settings, connection between mathematics and science school practices, teacher education (mathematics and science prospective / practicing teachers and teacher educators).