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Since 1971, the Freudenthal Institute has developed an approach to mathematics education named Realistic Mathematics Education (RME). The philosophy of RME is based on Hans Freudenthal’s concept of ‘mathematics as a human activity’. Prof. Hans Freudenthal (1905-1990), a mathematician and educator, believes that ‘ready-made mathematics’ should not be taught in school. By contrast, he urges that students should be offered ‘realistic situations’ so that they can rediscover from informal to formal mathematics. Although mathematics education in Vietnam has some achievements, it still encounters several challenges. Recently, the reform of teaching methods has become an urgent task in Vietnam. It appears that Vietnamese mathematics education lacks necessary theoretical frameworks. At first sight, the philosophy of RME is suitable for the orientation of the teaching method reform in Vietnam. However, the potential of RME for mathematics education as well as the ability of applying RME to teaching mathematics is still questionable in Vietnam. The primary aim of this dissertation is to research into abilities of applying RME to teaching and learning mathematics in Vietnam and to answer the question “how could RME enrich Vietnamese mathematics education?”. This research will emphasize teaching geometry in Vietnamese middle school. More specifically, the dissertation will implement the following research tasks: • Analyzing the characteristics of Vietnamese mathematics education in the ‘reformed’ period (from the early 1980s to the early 2000s) and at present; • Implementing a survey of 152 middle school teachers’ ideas from several Vietnamese provinces and cities about Vietnamese mathematics education; • Analyzing RME, including Freudenthal’s viewpoints for RME and the characteristics of RME; • Discussing how to design RME-based lessons and how to apply these lessons to teaching and learning in Vietnam; • Experimenting RME-based lessons in a Vietnamese middle school; • Analyzing the feedback from the students’ worksheets and the teachers’ reports, including the potentials of RME-based lessons for Vietnamese middle school and the difficulties the teachers and their students encountered with RME-based lessons; • Discussing proposals for applying RME-based lessons to teaching and learning mathematics in Vietnam, including making suggestions for teachers who will apply these lessons to their teaching and designing courses for in-service teachers and teachers-in training. This research reveals that although teachers and students may encounter some obstacles while teaching and learning with RME-based lesson, RME could become a potential approach for mathematics education and could be effectively applied to teaching and learning mathematics in Vietnamese school.
Our work goes in two directions. At first we want to transfer definitions, concepts and results of the theory of hyperidentities and solid varieties from the total to the partial case. (1) We prove that the operators chi^A_RNF and chi^E_RNF are only monotone and additive and we show that the sets of all fixed points of these operators are characterized only by three instead of four equivalent conditions for the case of closure operators. (2) We prove that V is n − SF-solid iff clone^SF V is free with respect to itself, freely generated by the independent set {[fi(x_1, . . . , x_n)]Id^SF_n V | i \in I}. (3) We prove that if V is n-fluid and ~V |P(V ) =~V −iso |P(V ) then V is kunsolid for k >= n (where P(V ) is the set of all V -proper hypersubstitutions of type \tau ). (4) We prove that a strong M-hyperquasi-equational theory is characterized by four equivalent conditions. The second direction of our work is to follow ideas which are typical for the partial case. (1) We characterize all minimal partial clones which are strongly solidifyable. (2)We define the operator Chi^A_Ph where Ph is a monoid of regular partial hypersubstitutions.Using this concept, we define the concept of a Phyp_R(\tau )-solid strong regular variety of partial algebras and we prove that a PHyp_R(\tau )-solid strong regular variety satisfies four equivalent conditions.
We analyze the asymptotic behavior in the limit epsilon to zero for a wide class of difference operators H_epsilon = T_epsilon + V_epsilon with underlying multi-well potential. They act on the square summable functions on the lattice (epsilon Z)^d. We start showing the validity of an harmonic approximation and construct WKB-solutions at the wells. Then we construct a Finslerian distance d induced by H and show that short integral curves are geodesics and d gives the rate for the exponential decay of Dirichlet eigenfunctions. In terms of this distance, we give sharp estimates for the interaction between the wells and construct the interaction matrix.
We consider a system of infinitely many hard balls in R<sup>d undergoing Brownian motions and submitted to a smooth pair potential. It is modelized by an infinite-dimensional stochastic differential equation with a local time term. We prove that the set of all equilibrium measures, solution of a detailed balance equation, coincides with the set of canonical Gibbs measures associated to the hard core potential added to the smooth interaction potential.