Over the past two decades, there has been a loud call around us to integrate Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) across all subjects in the primary and secondary curricula. However, researchers have argued that sustainability and mathematics education remain largely unconnected in actual classrooms. The question as to what sustainable mathematics education could look like in the 21st century remains unanswered. There is a pressing need to rethink, re-envision mathematics teaching and learning for 21st-century learning priorities.In this note, we first present a theoretical synthesis of the specialized literature on the learning and teaching of mathematics. We then attempt to contribute to this particular area by challenging the traditional boundaries of the philosophy of mathematics, followed by some thoughts on ESD in mathematics teacher education. In doing so, we seek to call attention to the need for integrating ESD into mathematics education. We hope, through our call in this note, that more researchers will be stimulated to revisit the integration of ESD into mathematics education, and, consequently, to conceptualize how, and where, efforts should be focused in order to integrate aspects of ESD with mathematics teaching and learning in schools.

A mathematics framework was developed to integrate problem-solving that incorporated simulation of real-life problems in the classrooms. The framework coined as the RECCE-MODEL emphasised understanding and thinking with a view on mathematics embedded in real-life. The RECCE which stands for Realistic, Educational, Contextual, Cognitive, and Evaluation encompass the underlying principles of teaching problem solving and guide teachers in planning, designing, developing, and facilitating real-life activity tasks in developing students’ problem-solving competencies in mathematics lessons. It also explores students’ cognitive competency in their application of abstract mathematical knowledge into real-life problems based on students’ developmental status of their thinking and reasoning skills correlating to Meanings, Organise, Develop, Execute and Link (MODEL). This study investigated the affective development of the students through activity tasks developed by the sampled teachers using the principles within the framework. In total, 94 students from two high schools in Brunei Darussalam responded to a students’ questionnaire constructed to address the MODEL aspect of the framework. In particular, the analyses involved the students’ affective competencies that corresponded to a 19-item instrument within the questionnaire.  The findings showed that Brunei high school students have stimulated beliefs and positive attitudes towards non-routine problem-solving in the learning of mathematics. Meanwhile, meaningful activities developed by the teachers encouraged the development of cognitive-metacognitive and affective competencies of the students. The RECCE-MODEL framework paved the way towards understanding the relationships between effective pedagogical approaches and students’ learning, and between attitudes and cognitive abilities, and also for teachers to make better-informed decisions in the delivery of the curriculum.

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<p>Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a constructivist, student-centered instructional strategy in which students work collaboratively to solve problems and reflect on their learning experiences to advance or gain new knowledge. PBL was originally developed in medical school programs at the McMaster University in Canada in the 1960s. Since then, much research has highlighted the benefits of PBL for developing students’ mathematical knowledge in more flexible and novel ways than traditional teacher-centered teaching approaches. However, there has been a lack of studies examining how PBL can be applied to mathematics teaching and learning, since studies that have investigated the implementation of PBL outside a medical context are sparse in Brunei Darussalam. Therefore, in this study, we attempted to fill this research gap by exploring the implementation process of PBL in a Year 9 mathematics classroom and its possible impact on students’ learning in mathematics in the context of Brunei Darussalam. The participants of the study consisted of 17 Year 9 students (ages 14-15) from a secondary school in Brunei Darussalam The findings from our study showed that the implementation of PBL helped motivate the students to collaboratively work as a group and learn from their peers and therefore, gradually reduced their dependence on the teacher during the course of the intervention. The results from the students’ performances on the pre-test and the post-test also provided evidence to show that the implementation of PBL could have a positive impact on the students’ learning in mathematics. Directions for future mathematical PBL implementation are also discussed and offered. </p>

The benefits of problem-based learning (PBL) to student learning have prompted researchers to investigate this pedagogical approach over the past few decades. However, little research has examined how PBL can be applied to mathematics learning and teaching, especially in countries like Taiwan, where the majority of teachers are accustomed to lecture methods and students are used to this style of teaching. This study examines the actions of a teacher and her class of 35 fifth-grade students (10-11-yearolds) as they tried to take on and respond to the demands of their new roles as "facilitator" and "constructors", respectively, during a one-year PBL intervention in a Taiwanese mathematics classroom. Our findings provide insights into classroom participants' role transition, from a customary role to a new role, when engaging with PBL. We identify an interrelationship between the teacher and student roles and discuss implications for the implementation of PBL at the primary education level.