The aim of the proposed project is to develop and expand an international research collaboration based on

exploring the potential of using so-called Fermi problems (FPs) in mathematics classrooms to help students and

pre-service teacher students understand and investigate issues related to the 17 UN Sustainable Development

Goals (SDGs).

FPs are contextualized problems that require students to structure and make assumptions about the problem

situation and estimate relevant quantities, such as How many people do you think can fit on the playground?

The general framework of the models and modeling perspective on teaching and learning is used to combine

ethnomathematics and FPs to address the following overarching research questions (RQs):

How can FPs be designed to support students' understanding and investigation of sustainability issues?

What are the characteristics of the contexts of the FPs that elicit issues related to the different 17 UN SDGs

when students and pre-service teachers solve these FPs?

What are the issues related to the different 17 UN SDGs that are elicited by students and pre-service

teachers, and to what extent are they related to local or global aspects of culture?

The RQs will be explored in an international collaboration involving 7 research teams over a 3-year period. The

outcome of the project is a new framework for analyzing students’ work on FPs aligned with the UN SDGs and

sets of FPs focusing on SDGs to be used in the mathematics classrooms.