Proficiency and Beliefs in Learning and Teaching Mathematics: Learning from Alan Schoenfeld and Gunter Torner

The book was principally conceived to celebrate the work of two outstanding scholars: Alan Schoenfeld and Günter Törner. First and foremost, we would like to acknowledge and thank them for supporting the idea of publishing such a book and contributing their respective chapters.
We also want to take this opportunity to thank and acknowledge all others who have been involved in the process of preparing this book. This has been a wonderful experience. Here are a few highlights of the process:

1. This book resulted fromthe typical process of requesting, contributing and editing chapters. However, the current volume is not typical in its content because all the chapters refer to and build upon these two scholars’ work. Although mathematics education as a field does not have a long history, there have been many books published on mathematics education research and practice. However, there are few books that focus on what we can learn from and how we can build on others’ work as this volume does. We would especially like to acknowledge the scholars who contributed chapters to this volume. This volume would not have been possible without their contributions detailing ways
to build upon and expand the work of others.
2. Although it may seem that the contributors were all close friends, this book has actually brought together people who had never collaborated before and has provided the opportunity to develop new professional relationships. For example, although Judit is a former student of Alan’s, she had not met Günter.
Yeping first formally met Günter in August 2011 in College Station, Texas and started the conversation about the possibility and value of editing and publishing such a book. Thus, the work on this book has not only brought together long time friends and colleagues, but also created new professional connections and resulted in new friends. We want to thank all those who were so ready and willing to work with new colleagues and create new connections.
It is easy to see that the volume is the product of an international collaboration of scholars from different countries and disciplines. This book would not have been possible without the dedicated group of 31 contributors from six countries (Austria, Canada, Germany, Israel, UK, and the US) and we thank them for their contributions. This group of contributors also worked together as a team to review the chapters of this publication. Their collective efforts helped ensure this book’s quality.