The second international mathematics study

After a hiatus of several years the IEA, at the urging of Roy Phillips of the New Zealand Department of Education, convened a meeting in the summer of 1976, at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, to consider whether a second study of mathematics should be undertaken. There was substantial agreement at that time that, should a second study be undertaken, the focus should be on mathematics education internationally. At a subsequent meeting in St Andrews, Scotland, the decision was made to undertake such a study, and an International Coordinating Committee was established under the Chairmanship of Kenneth Travers. The goals of this project, which came to be known as the Second International Mathematics Study (SIMS), were much more ambitious and its structure considerably different from FIMS. The overall objective was to produce an international portrait of mathematics education, with a particular emphasis on the mathematics classroom. There would be significant input and guidance at every stage from the mathematics education community. Two populations were studied by FIMS, a younger population consisting of 13-yearolds and an older population consisting of students in their last year of secondary school. This latter group presented some problems, in that in some countries this group consisted only of a small percentage of the cohort specializing in mathematics while in others it consisted of a large percentage of more general students. This made for difficulties in comparing a broad population to a much more selective group.