Mathematics Teaching and Learning

The research group is set up with the overall goal to strengthen the mathematics didactic research at Nord University and, in this way, both contribute to the enhancement of the research competence of the members of the group and to the improvement of the mathematics teacher education.

The purpose of the research group is rooted in the faculty’s research strategy and is in line with the strategy’s major goal “to develop both the professional field, the education we offer and the research-based knowledge related to this”.

The research group is working on the realization of this goal by discussing teaching issues, informing each other by staff colloquia, sharing and discussing relevant research literature, discussing new calls for research proposals, setting up small studies with students, preparing conference presentations, and providing mutual feedback on articles group members are writing.

The research group's focus of interest is on teaching and learning mathematics in kindergarten, primary and secondary school and teacher education.​​

Active research projects

  • Project leader: Asif Mushtaq ​

    • Programming in Schools

    Objective: To conduct research related to the introduction of coding in primary schools. In the last decades, information technology has drastically transformed our society; for better or worse, we are experiencing an arguably unstoppable revolution driven by computers and algorithms. Today's children are growing up in a world where they encounter and interact with information and communication technology (ICT) almost everywhere. It is only natural that schools reflect this reality. How?

    The challenges of introducing digital education in schools, and in the institutions that educate teachers for these schools, are diverse. As part of its 'Digitalization Strategy for Primary Education 2017-2021,' the Ministry of Education has introduced coding (programming) as an elective subject in secondary school and initiated a national pilot project with coding as a vocational subject in high school. Are schools ready for this task? Are students in our teacher education prepared? Is there currently sufficient general programming competence among teachers for this task? Among the established? Among those currently in education?

    In this project, we address these challenges and explore how they can be addressed.

    • STEMcode: Coding and STEM Education:

    Objective: STEMcode is a project that focuses on integrating coding into STEM education.

    The project aims to enhance knowledge broadly by providing teachers with concrete examples and practical implementation on how to integrate coding into STEM lessons.

  • Project leader: Klaus-Peter Eichler

    The aims and objectives:

    • ​To prepare teacher students to master the challenges of the increasing diversity of students in a class.
    • To prepare teacher students to meet the challenges of using digital tools both as a subject and as a tool for teaching.
    • To give the experience and practice interesting motivating possibilities of using hardware and software such as mathematikus, GeoGebra, micro:bit, and 3D printing to the student teachers as well teachers of the universities.
    • To improve their diagnostic skills of the students so that they can use the software as a tool in the classroom.
    • To give the first starting point for the upcoming research activities regarding digital inclusion in mathematics teaching.
    • To enhance the mutual cooperation in mathematics education and between two universities of Norway and Czech Republic

    Project members/partner

    Nord University, Bodø Norway

    1. Prof. Dr. Klaus-Peter Eichler (Project leader)
    2. Dr. Dag Oskar Madsen (Associate professor of mathematics)
    3. Dr. Asif Mushtaq (Associate professor of mathematics)

    Project members- TU University Liberec Czech Republic

    1. Dr. Daniela Bimova
    2. Dr. Petra Pirklová
    3. Dr. Jiří Břehovský

    Activities and implementation of the project:

    Kick-off-Meeting in Bodø (September 2020)
    This meeting was held online via team where all members of the project got to know each other. This meeting was supposed to be in Bodø physically but due to Corona pandemic it was decided to hold it via teams.

    Few practical futuristic decisions were taken in this meeting and worked on the future plan.

    ​Activities at Nord University in Norway
    Development/progress of Mathematikus.de. Professor Klaus-Peter Eicher is working on the development of Mathematikus.de
    For more information visit www.mathematikus.de

    Activities related to Microbit

    Seminar: Forskningsdagene september 2020

    Dag Madsen Oskar administered the meeting.
    Klaus-Peter Eichler could not travel from Germany due to pandemic

    Asif Mushtaq conducted two workshops with Bodin VG skole students on Mircobit

    Topic was “Micro:bit som hjerne for mange aktiviteter”

    More about mathematikus​:

    Mathematikus – train spatial abilities online

    A new offer from the Mathematics Section at Nord University Bodø. Just in time for the new school year, the website mathematikus.de, developed under the leadership of Prof. Klaus-Peter Eichler, was launched. With mathematikus.de, students have free access to interactive origami folding instructions and tasks to develop their spatial abilities. A variety of motivating tasks encourage students to imagine spatial objects and processes.


    The ability to imagine spatially is essential in many areas of life. Often, spatial imagination is considered as the fourth cultural technique in addition to reading, writing, and computing. Our world is three-dimensional, but all descriptions of objects or processes in this threedimensional world are verbal or using two-dimensional images. Therefore, the translation between verbal descriptions or 2-dimensional images and the three-dimensional reality in the imagination is crucial for success at work and in daily life. Spatial imagination is necessary to solve many problems: Whoever hears a route description has to imagine how to go. Whoever sees a folding instruction like an origami diagram must imagine the process of folding. Last but not least, spatial imagination is a crucial prerequisite for arithmetic performance: many students with arithmetic weaknesses have these problems because they have difficulties imagining objects and processes.

    The animations on the website mathematikus.de offer users informative just-in-time feedback: everyone can immediately see why the selected solution is correct or not. Animated fold-steps make it easier to imagine the folding in reality. Last but not least, the user can watch the animation of each fold-step as often as necessary.

    Thus, everyone can work at their speed and try, err and correct at their convenience. The website mathematikus.de was originally developed with Flash. As part of the iTEM project, the website is completely redesigned, newly programmed, and significantly expanded. The website mathematikus.de now automatically adapts to the screen size and can also be used on devices with touchscreens.


    The website mathematikus.de is a part of the project iTEM (improving Teacher Education in Mathematics), which is carried out jointly by scientists from the TU Liberec and the Nord University Bodø. Project members from the Nord University are Klaus-Peter Eichler, Dag O. Madsen, and Asif Mushtaq.

    The iTEM project is led by:
    Ass. Prof. Mgr. Daniela Bimova, Ph.D. (Technická univerzita v Liberci) and
    Prof. Dr. Klaus-Peter Eichler (Nord University Bodø)
    The iTEM project is funded by the DZS of the Czech Republic within the EEA (EØS) Grants 2014-2021 - Iceland Liechtenstein Norway Grants.

  • Project leader: Iliada Elia, University of Cyprus.
    Participants: Marja van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, Eleni Deliyanni

    Several studies have provided evidence for the significant contribution of picture book reading in stimulating children’s mathematical thinking and development. However, the role of the teachers when using picture books to support children’s learning in mathematics has received limited research attention.

    As a first step to address this gap, in this study we focused on investigating early childhood teachers’ competence to identify the mathematics in picture books. The participants of the study were 9 early childhood teachers in Cyprus.​

    Output so far:
    Iliada Elia, Marja van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, Dag Oskar Madsen, Eleni Deliyianni, Cathrine Bjerknes (2021). Teachers’ awareness of the learning-supportive characteristics of picture books in early mathematics. Presentation at the 19th Biennial EARLI Conference, 23-27 August, Gothenburg (online).

    Marja van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, Iliada Elia, Dag Oskar Madsen, Eleni Deliyianni, Cathrine Bjerknes (2021). Early childhood teachers’ awareness of the characteristics of picture books for learning mathematics. Poster submitted to 12th Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME12).

    Paper submitted and accepted for the 20th Biennial EARLI Conference in Thessaloniki: “Early childhood teachers’ competence to identify mathematics in picture books”.​

  • Project leader: Marja van den Heuvel-Panhuizen

    This project is a joint enterprise of Løpsmark School in Bodø and Nord University. The goal of the ETT project is to develop and investigate opportunities for students in Grade 5 to stimulate in-dept learning and deep understanding of mathematics by offering them enriched textbook tasks.

    Team involved:
    Løpsmark School, Bodø: Monica Alstad, Classroom teacher
    Nord University: Marja van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, Professor, Dag Oskar Madsen, Associate Professor, 2 Master’s students.

    Participants:
    Løpsmark School: Monica Alstad, Tonje Hadsel
    Nord University: Dag Oskal Madsen, Trygve Kvåle Løken

    Output so far:
    Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, M., Madsen, D. O., Alstad, M., Breckan, R-A., Johansen, A. M. (2022). Giving a boost to textbook tasks. Paper accepted for The Fourth International Conference on Mathematics Textbook Research and Development (ICMT 4), Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, 11-14 October 2022.

  • ​Project leader: Antoine Julien

    Evaluation of student’s work is an indispensable part of the teacher’s profession. In the mathematical classroom the naïve perspective is that evaluation is a clear-cut process which requires little explanation – after all in mathematics the answer is either right or wrong. This view is too simplistic and misunderstands mathematics as a science. Moreover, it misses the opportunity for feedback and learning every evaluation presents.

    The SELF-M project investigates (self-)evaluation as a challenge in teacher education. We focus on effects of self-evaluation and peer-evaluation on subject-matter understanding and professional judgement of pre-service teachers. The investigation is based on the Norwegian context (lærerutdanning), in the framework of 5-year integrated teacher education.

    Participants: E.I. Romijn, A.L.C. Julien, A. Schmeding

  • ​Project members: Nord University: Marthe Måløy and Trygve Kvåle Løken (Associate Professors) Bankgata Middle School: Øyvind Nilsen, Anders Solbakken and Olav Myrvoll (Classroom teachers)

    Computational thinking has recently been included in the primary and secondary school mathematics education curriculum in Norway, and programming is becoming an increasingly important tool for the students. However, many teachers lack the proper competence in computer programming and may struggle to implement computational thinking in their teaching. Therefore, we propose a teaching strategy for computational thinking linked to geometric understanding and drawing of geometric figures via block or line-based programming, in line with the ideas Seymour Papert introduced in the 1980s.

    The project is a joint enterprise of Nord University and Bankgata Middle School in Bodø.

    Output so far:
    Løken, T. K., (2022). Computational Thinking through Geometric Understanding: A Case Study on Programming in Mathematics Education. 34th Norwegian ICT conference for research and education (NIKT34), University of Agder, Kristiansand.

  • The subject renewal and the introduction of the new curriculum LK20 led to the introduction of programming as a mandatory topic in school mathematics. Even stronger, school mathematics is the main subject responsible to teach programming in Norwegian schools. The competency and learning goals in the new curriculum are somewhat vague. This makes it unclear as to how authors and publishing houses of mathematics textbooks interpret these objectives. In addition, programming exercises are a completely new genre of exercises within mathematics textbooks for Norwegian schools.

    The aim of the project is to evaluate what pupils can learn from these exercises, how they relate to the goals of LK20 and to concepts such as computational thinking.

    Participants: M. Jensen, A.L. Julien, A. Rafiepour, A. Schmeding

  • The concept of fractions takes a central position in lower secondary mathematics education. This project contributes to an existing body of research looking into how fraction education could be organized in order to foster students' conceptual understanding. To do so, this project explores lower secondary students' and teachers' use of metaphors when they talk about fractions during practical activities in out-of-school classrooms.

    The aim is to better understand and discuss how language influences students' understanding of fractions and, hence, what kind of language can be meaningful to use to promote their understanding.

    Project leader: Leonie Johann
    Participant: Marja- van den Heuvel-Panhuizen

  • In this project it is investigated how and why students like and dislike mathematics tasks, and whether this liking or disliking of the tasks is influenced by the students’ perceived solvability of the tasks.

    This project is based on the master’s thesis of Ylva Høgset and is aimed at converting this master’s thesis into a journal article.

    Project leader: Ylva Høgset
    Participant: Marja- van den Heuvel-Panhuizen

  • In this project, we investigate how different representations of three-dimensional units can act as perceptual clues for students in discovering the underlying structure in three-dimensional figures.

    Participants: Maren Berre, Edgar Alstad and Per Gustav Nilsson​

Members of the research group – here from our seminar in Levanger in December 2022.​

Contact person
Employee photo: Trygve Kvåle Løken
Leader of the research group

Trygve Kvåle Løken

trygve.k.loken@nord.no