Jill Adler

Jill Adler is a Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Education, Oxford University. Her career spans large-scale teacher development projects, including the Wits Maths Connect Secondary (WMCS) Project and the Nuffield-funded “Developing Language-Responsive Mathematics Classrooms”. She served as President of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI) from 2017-2020 and held the SARChI Mathematics Education Chair (2010-2019).

• Education: PhD in Mathematics Education.
• Awards:
  • 2015 ICMI Hans Freudenthal Medal
  • 2012 ASSAf Gold Medal for Science in the Service of Society
  • 2015 Svend Pedersen Lecture Award
  • 2003 Vice Chancellor’s Research Award
  • 2003 Vice Chancellor’s Academic Citizenship Team Award

Research Interests focus on mathematics teacher development in multilingual and resource-constrained settings. She has pioneered frameworks like Mathematical Discourse in Instruction (MDI) and Mediating Primary Mathematics (MPM) to analyze classroom practices, emphasizing coherence in explanations, representation transformations, and language-responsive pedagogy. Her work bridges curriculum reform, pedagogical theory, and teacher identity formation.

Publications highlight trends in language-responsive teaching, variation theory, and teacher professional development. Key themes include exemplification strategies, mathematical discourse, and policy implementation challenges in diverse educational systems.