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Overview PREMA2

PREMA Research project stemmed as a response to the need of deepening understanding on the socio-cultural and pedagogic factors that impede upon girls’ equitable –to that of boys, performance in mathematics, which in turn affect women’s under-representation in areas of social and economic importance. In this regard the scope of the first phase of the project (PREMA 1) was the identification of discrepancies between “needs and provisions” in mathematics education and teaching at the levels of: the system, classroom, and the individual learner, across the 25 Member States. Such an identification aimed at contributing to the design of appropriate social and educational policies for both genders and to foster the dialogue on the improvement of teaching practices so that these are commensurate to the “learning needs” of girls. The long term impact was, and continuous to be in this second phase of the project, the equitable access of girls to the acquisition of competencies for living and working in the digital age.
PREMA 2 is an attempt to sustain the PREMA results and in such an effort to make these more scalable and more useful (in the form of a model curriculum framework ) by the teaching practices actors.
PREMA 1 was concerned in diagnosing the socio-cultural and pedagogic factors responsible for the gender gap. PREMA 2 is about starting to intervene to alleviate the gender gap. In this sense PREMA 2 is more focused and less ambitious as it is not possible to tackle all problems at once.

More specifically, PREMA 2 overall aim is at raising awareness on issues of mathematics and gender in order to increase the level of girls’ participation in career choices of sciences and technology. This is to be achieved by undertaking a set of activities that lead to the articulation of a teacher training curriculum framework on gender and mathematics that will include a set of reflective tools that will assist teachers to be aware, ask questions and reflect on gender issues in their curriculum. The Curriculum Framework should be flexible enough to be used in different contexts either in-service teacher training or pre-service, in different learning traditions and targeted for the secondary levels of education. ilt on the bases of recent research results which suggest that there is little –if any at all, uptake of teachers training on the thematic orientation of gender and mathematics. On the other hand, on-going research also points to the direction that socio-cultural and pedagogical factors –expressed in terms of motivation and self esteem, tend to affect girl’s performance in mathematics and have serious consequences on girl’s choices of careers. This has direct implications for women’s representations (or better under-representation) in areas of social and economic importance i.e. science and technology sectors.

PREMA 2 is an attempt to sustain the discourse on its thematic orientation and on such a base facilitate the uptake (offering) of teacher training courses on gender and mathematics by focussing on the design of an evidence-based curricular framework (to be provided both as a Common European Curriculum and contextualized to the specific requirements for the national contexts of: Greece, Spain, UK, France, Austria and Poland). PREMA 2 aims to supply teacher training schemes with a validated curriculum and related reflective (self-observation based) tools. Both the design and application of the curriculum/a and tools will be based / will imply a collaborative and self-reflective approach from a context oriented and gender sensitive perspective to learning (teacher training). In parallel PREMA 2 will set-up a Network of practitioners to facilitate the building of the curriculum which in turn is tested at national and European / International levels. Upon two sets of iterative refinement the Curriculum is mainstreamed to the target groups (teachers and teachers-to-be of both primary and secondary levels).