The rapid development of generative artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to have a profound impact on various aspects of human society, including mathematics education. Nevertheless, there is a noticeable lack of research, particularly in Greece, that focuses on the development and assessment of lesson plans and math worksheets tailored for students with special educational needs. To address this research gap, we designed and conducted a nine-hour teaching intervention in a general mathematics classroom in Greece, involving two 8th grade students with special educational needs as the subjects of the study. The intervention utilized worksheets generated by the ChatGPT 3.5 application, which were customized based on the current curriculum, as well as the special educational needs and interests of the two participating students. The data were collected through interviews, tasks, and e-questionnaires, and analyzed using a new theoretical framework based on the concept of mathematical familiarity. The results indicated that students were actively engaged in the educational process, felt safe and confident, satisfactorily met the learning objectives, and developed positive attitudes towards the mathematics course. The paper concludes with a list of good practices, teaching suggestions and restrictions that could be useful to teachers and education policy makers. The target audience for the current study is, mainly, mathematics teachers who serve at all levels of education and have students with special educational needs in their classrooms. Furthermore, the article may also prove of interest to students, parents and teachers who are interested in the interaction between mathematics education and generative AI.

In this paper, we present a research project we conducted with 27 undergraduate students in a history of mathematics course in Greece during the academic year 2022-2023. In our study, we presented participants with an open-ended problem with historical background and evaluated their reactions and solving strategies. To reach findings we collected data via worksheets, questionnaires and interviews. We intended to focus on students’ techniques for open-ended issues while also investigating whether and how History of Mathematics may be included into its instruction. The results showed that such type of problems is able to catch the participants’ attention and support them in experimentation and development of multiple problem solving strategies. The students acquired a positive attitude towards the entire process, and they would like to repeat it in other university courses, too. This study might pave the way for a new curriculum that includes historically inspired open-ended assignments in school and university practice.

In this paper, we present parts of an online qualitative research project which lasted a whole semester about the understanding of real numbers by sixty first-year Greek mathematics undergraduate students during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus on the distinction between rational and irrational numbers and their location on the number line using straightedge and compass. The results, came of questionnaires, focused interviews and tasks, disclosed some gaps regarding real numbers that the students had from school and revealed confusion between irrational numbers and their decimal approximation. The results also led us to group students’ conceptions of rational and irrational numbers into five categories related to the number and pattern of decimal digits. Teaching practices and perspectives as well as the, negative, impact of the pandemic on teaching and learning mathematics are discussed.

An alternative instructional model, which due to the social reality created by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is gaining more and more popularity in the global educational community, is the so called “flipped classroom”. In this paper we give the details of a one-week qualitative research we conducted in order to explore the effectiveness of the flipped classroom model in an undergraduate “mathematics education” course in Greece. The study involved thirty third-year math students, whose achievements and perceptions were captured with the help of questionnaire, task, personal interviews, and open discussion in the class. The analysis of the research data indicated increased engagement of the students, development of positive attitudes about the learning, control of the learning pace, autonomy in managing the time required for study and relative improvement of students’ performance in problem solving and teamwork. At the same time, several challenges emerged. The main ones concerned the demand for frequent active students’ participation in the educational process, the management of queries during the homework, the doubts about the effectiveness of the method on difficult teaching subjects, as well as the time and skill requirements for preparing such a lesson.

Around the globe Covid-19 pandemic has influenced not only the education, but also our everyday life, among other aspects. In Greece, distance learning started to get in use widely in tertiary education, since the first national lockdown was announced and reshaped education in many ways. In the University of Thessaly, in the Department of Mathemat­ics, undergraduate students opt for a lot of different courses to attend and due to the Covid-19 crisis all of them are taught via web platforms. Some of the most significant theoreti­cal subjects are «Calculus» (with applications in Science and Mechanics), «Physics» (Classi­cal Mechanics) and «Philosophy of Science». In addition, some other applied subjects are «Programming Languages» and «Digital Technologies in Mathematics Education» and the impact the above have, generally in edu­cation and society itself. In this paper, we describe the different ways students have re­acted regarding learning Sciences in a distance learning environment. We split our case study in two parts. The first one is about the way students experience e-learning and the second one is about their suggestions for the next day. Integrating e-questionnaires and interviews and taking into account parameters like economic factors and the permanent residence issue, we asked the students about their preferences among face-to-face learning, distance learning and a blended model. Remarks about the academic life and the possible ways of taking the extra step, after the Covid-19 crisis ceases to exist, are made.

The choice of the appropriate instructional method for teaching Euclidean Geometry to children with Special Learning Difficulties is an important topic. In this paper we study some theoretical issues related to the teaching of geometric concepts to students with Special Learning Difficulties, focusing on the teaching material. We present the design, implementation and results of a qualitative research conducted with six 9th grade students in a Special Vocational High School in Greece, on the use of the website “Byrne’s Euclid” in the teaching of propositions of Euclidean Geometry. The research showed that the children understood the key points of the proof of the proposition we presented and they assimilated basic geometric concepts and processes using colors and figures. The paper concludes with a discussion upon suggestions, perspectives and limitations for teaching that utilizes Byrne’s Euclid.