Learning from the Past: Case Studies of Past ‘Local’ Curriculum Reforms

The major reform movements (e.g. RME, New Maths) discussed in Chap. 4 have also served to inspire reform efforts at a national level. In this chapter, the authors consider local reform efforts in three countries. In order to gather data in relation to local curriculum reform, the authors created a survey which was distributed to six mathematics educators, reputed by having worked on curriculum issues in different countries. The authors sought to investigate how local curriculum reform efforts evolved and to extend the empirical analysis beyond the countries represented at the ICMI Study. Data was gathered from a range of different countries, including Brazil, Japan, Ireland, Italy, Serbia and South Africa, and three of these are considered in this chapter. The countries selected were Ireland, Serbia and South Africa. These were selected for consideration due to the commonalities in some aspects of the curriculum reform efforts as well as unique differences. Despite these differing contexts, many of the same lessons have emerged from each of the reform movements.