GENERAL INFORMATION
Born in 1941, he took his degree in Mathematics in 1964.
Associated Professor of Mathematics Education since 1983.
After his degree, he published 5 papers in the field of homological algebra
After 1971, his research interests oriented towards applied statistics (5 published papers) and mathematics education.
Mathematics education progressively became his main field of research. He published more than 100 articles, one half of them at the international level.
Since 1976, he leads a research group in the field of mathematics education in Genoa, which involves 25 school teachers and 7 university researchers in two kinds of activities, functionally correlated:
- development of projects for teaching of mathematics in primary and lower secondary schools (from grade I to grade VIII);
- fundamental research concerning some questions of mathematics education.

PERSONAL RESEARCH
In 1976 he began an activity of coordination of groups of University researchers and teachers involved in the renewal of mathematics teaching, taking into account the Italian research activities and didactical innovations. Then he moved to research in Mathematics Education in relationship with the international research community, trying to establish links with paradigms and perspectives developed at the international level in basic research related to didactic innovation.
His most important research works are related to:

• the role of the context in learning and teaching mathematics at primary school. The theoretical construct “Field of Experience”, presented in the plenary at the International Congress PME-XIII (Paris, 1999), has been reconsidered and refined at the presentation of the Research Forum PME-XIX research forum (1995) and further developed in research leaded by some members of his equipe (Dapueto&Parenti, 1999; and Douek, 2003: see bibliography related to the State of the Art).
• the linguistic aspects of learning and teaching of mathematics. This research theme has been developed (starting from the middle of 80's) into three directions, aimed at finding: the potentialities inherent in the verbal (oral and written) activities of the students for the construction of concepts and the approach to theoretical thinking (Boero, Douek & Ferrari, 2002); the nature of the processes involved in the problem solving with the use of algebraic language (Boero, 2001); and recently the “constructive” functions of verbal language in situations of interaction between “peers” , orchestrated by the teacher (Consogno, Gazzolo and Boero, 2006; Boero and Consogno, 2007);
• the approach to conjecturing and proving activities in lower secondary school school. In this field, the original contributions regard: the potential related to the students' actitude to maintain a relationship (<>) between the activity of conjecture production and the construction of proof; and the finding of some mental dynamics of conjecturing and proving, which can be enhanced in students through tasks referring to suitable “Fields of experience” (see Boero, Garuti&Lemut, 2006).
• the development of innovative methodologies concerning the active imitation, by students, of relevant texts of the history of the scientific thinking, with the aim of “conveying” ways of thinking, which are important in pure and applied mathematics (5 research reports in PME Proceedings from 1997 to 2003, among which Garuti&Boero, 2002);
• the theoretical framing of the complexity of performances like conjecturing and proving, and mathematical modeling, in relation with the teaching and learning difficulties in school, and with the problems posed by the relationships of such activities, when proposed at school, with the (school and extra-school) cultural background of the students.
  It deals with the most recent research tenet, motivated also by the necessity of comparison with cultures which are different to ours and with ways of reasoning characteristic of such cultures. The theoretical framework elaborated by Habermas about rationality seems to be a useful reference, if adequately developed in relation to the specificities of the activities in mathematical field (see Boero, 2006).
  

Finally, in relation with the coordination and evaluation of the research and the formation of young researchers made at national and international level, he was interested (in collaboration with other researchers) in problems concerning the “definition” of the nature and tasks of research in Mathematics Education (see Boero&Radnai Szendrei, 1997); and of its resonance in teacher training (see Boero, Dapueto&Parenti, 1996).

COORDINATION AND EVALUATION OF RESEARCH AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL
Since 1990 he is a member of the editorial board of Educational Studies in Mathematics
Since 2003 he is one of the four associate editors of the same Journal
He was the editor of a Special Issue of Ed. Studies in Math., concerning "Teaching and learning mathematics in context" (vol.39, 1999).
He was the editor of a synthesis volume concerning research in the teaching and learning of theorems at the international level; and co-editor of a synthesis volume on research in the psychology of mathematics education (related to scientific contributions of the PME group in the last thirty years). See the first two volumes quoted in the list of personal publications.
Since 1990 he was a member of the editorial board of the journal Recherches en Didactique des Mathematiques, then (since 1993) a member of the scientific committee of the same journal.
He served as responsible of several Working and Discussion Groups in international meetings. In recent years he was the responsible of TSG-12 at ICME-9 (2000) and co-responsible of DG-3 at ICME-10 (2004), he is a member of a survey team at ICME-11 (2008).
He served as chair of the Program Committee of several International Meetings (the most recent ones: CIEAEM-57, 2005; CIEAEM-58, 2006; CIEAEM-59, 2007).
He has been the main coordinator of three national research projects in Mathematics Education from 2002 to 2006.
He has been president of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (ERME) for two terms, between 2001 and 2005.

TRAINING OF YOUNG RESEARCHERS
He has been scientific coordinator of the program for the European Summer School in Mathematics Education in 2002 (Klagenfurt), in 2004 (Podebrady), in 2006 (Yvaskila) and he will be scientific coordinator for the Summer School in 2008 (Turkey).
He has been advisor for 4 doctoral thesis in Mathematics Education at the University of Paris V - Sorbona, at the Purdue University (USA), at the University of Torino and at the University of Genova.
He has been member of doctoral committees in Mathematics Education at the University of Barcellona, Bordeaux, Geneve, Grenoble (two dissertations), Paris VII.
From 1994 to 1996 he was the coordinator of the Seminar for Research in Mathematics Education at the University of Genova, which most of the italian Ph. D. students in mathematics education and some of the neo-Ph. D. took part in.

COMMUNICATION OF THE RESEARCH RESULTS
In the 80's and 90's the activities of research and didactical experimentation coordinated in the elementary school and lower secondary school generated Technical Reports spread in the schools (500-600 copies for each of the following editions). After 2000 the diffusion of didactical proposals and research results employed mostly Internet, where “working units” have been put, accompanied by theoretical references and research results. We especially indicate the following initiatives of diffusion financed by MIUR (Italian Ministry of Education and Research), where Boero played a role of scientific responsible, or scientific advisor:
Progetto SeT " LINGUAGGI ":
http://www5.indire.it:8080/set/set_linguaggi/linguaggi.htm
Progetto SeT " MODELLI ":
http://www5.indire.it:8080/set/set_modelli/modellizzazione.htm
Progetto MIUR/DIMA:
http://didmat.dima.unige.it/miur/home_miur.html