Quality Teaching of Mathematical Modelling: What Do We Know, What Can We Do?

The topic of this paper is mathematical modelling or—as it is often, more broadly, called—applications and modelling. This has been an important topic in mathematics education during the last few decades, beginning with Pollak’s survey lecture (New Trends in Mathematics Teaching IV, Paris, pp. 232–248, 1979) at ICME-3, Karlsruhe 1976. By using the term “applications and modelling”, both the products and the processes in the interplay between the real world and mathematics are addressed. In this paper, I will try to summarize some important aspects, in particular, concerning the teaching of applications and modelling.

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