Monterrey Musings

Every four years, the International Congress on Mathematics Education is held to provide an opportunity to examine teaching and learning of mathematics from an international perspective. It includes performance comparisons between countries and reports on collaborative research projects, and it promotes understanding of the problems that exist in different cultures, as well as how the development of mathematics internationally enlightens the practice of teaching mathematics locally.One particularly informative element of the Congress is theTopic Study Groups, where people share papers on particular themes of mathematics education, one of which is the teaching and learning of mathematical modeling (TSG21).The most recent Congress (ICME-11) was held in Monterrey, Mexico on July 6-13, 2008, and my original intention for this article was to review some of the papers presented at TSG21. Some "higher ground" was discovered on the way there, and to set the stage for its examination, I will digress for a little while.