MaTeK project is a Horizon 2020 project, under the Twinning action that stands for research infrastructure building and institutional networking. A twinning project strengthens a specific field of research in an emerging institution in a Widening country.

The aim of this Horizon 2020 Twinning project is to strengthen the research performance and develop the excellence of the Department of Mathematics Education (DME) at the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics of Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia (UK BA), by becoming nationally and internationally recognized institution in the field of mathematics teacher knowledge. Teacher knowledge is the prerequisite of the education enterprise, and student knowledge its objective. For researchers, it is essential to understand what mathematics teachers know and how they use their expertise in teaching, which is subsequently linked to students’ knowledge. One of the ways how to address this issue is to work with pre-service mathematics teachers and their lesson design capacity, which will be MaTeK’s focus. The general goal of MaTeK is to provide the DME opportunity to learn from partners and to exchange best practices in the field of mathematics lesson design related to the topic of reasoning and proving. MaTeK will twin DME of UK BA with Departments of Mathematics and Mathematics Education of the following universities: 

• Charles University in Prague (CU), Czech Republic
• University of Palermo (UNIPA), Italy
• Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim (NTNU), Norway
• Middle East Technical University in Ankara (METU), Turkey

The main objective of MaTeK project is:

Establishment of extensive networks for excellence through the partnership with CU, UNIPA, NTNU and METU resulting in the strengthening of research performance by transfer of knowledge, expertise and by an exchange of best practices in the field of Mathematics Teacher Knowledge.

The main objective will be achieved through a series of twinning schemes, including workshops, seminars, summer schools, staff exchanges, and conference attendance, that will all be closely related to the defined common research and its preliminary research question:

“How can pre-service mathematics teachers’ design capacity in terms of reasoning and proof be enhanced?”

The success of such twinning will be demonstrated through the creation of new partnerships and increasing numbers and quality of publications at conferences, journals and other research and dissemination events (e.g., school visits; local conferences for in-service teachers with the direct application of innovative teaching methods and other project’s results).

MaTeK will operate through four work packages (WPs):

• WP 1 ‘Project management’ will coordinate the project and establish operational and reporting structures of the project including provision of external independent evaluation. (lead beneficiary: UK BA)
• WP 2 ‘Building scientific excellence and research structures’ is dedicated to enhancing the quality of the research undertaken by DME UK BA staff through training and sharing of scientific expertise and best practices amongst the partners. It also recognizes the importance of developing the academic infrastructure in achieving scientific excellence. (lead beneficiary: NTNU and UNIPA)
• WP 3 ‘Dissemination of results and impact’ is dedicated to raising the profile of DME UK BA in the international community and highlighting MaTeK as an exemplar of a Twinning partnership. (lead beneficiary: METU)
• WP 4 ‘Sustainability’ crucially develops a ‘roadmap’ for the development of DME UK BA and the consortium post the MaTeK programme between 2023-2028. (lead beneficiary: CU)

Project web page

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 951822.