Founded in 1967, the Centre celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 2017 – more details here…
The Shell Centre for Mathematical Education is known around the world for its innovative work on mathematics
education. The team has a wide range of ongoing activities including design, development and research.
Throughout its history the Shell Centre has had a close association with the School
of Education at the University of Nottingham and the core team is now part of the School's Centre
for Research into Mathematical Education.
A range of out-of-print publications including classic classroom materials (such as The Language of Functions and
Graphs) and research papers are available for download from the Shell
Centre Publications website.
The Shell Centre formed part of the Math Assessment
Resource Service (MARS), a partnership with the University of California at Berkeley and other colleagues
in the USA, whose output includes the Mathematics
Assessment Project, developing formative and summative assessments to support the new US Common Core State
Standards. The team has also contributed to Bowland Maths and the EU PRIMAS project.
Malcolm Swan, a key Shell Centre team member and internationally recognised designer of mathematics educational
materials, sadly died in 2017.
A brief obiturary can be found here.
Another key figure in the Centre's history, Alan Bell, passed away in 2018. A brief obiturary can be found here (PDF).
Alan's estate helped create the Bell Burkhardt Daro Shell Centre Trust. The Trust's work includes funding the ISDDE Prize for Excellence in Design for STEM Education
and maintaining this and other mathematics education-related websites carrying valuable materials which would otherwise have vanished when their projects ended.