In the fall of 1977 Jack Easley and several graduate students including me were working on "Children's Conceptions of Number and Numeral" funded by the National Institute of Education and directed by Professors John A. Easley, Jr. and Harold Lerch.
The the study was composed of two parts, "Diagnostic Testing" Directed by Lerch and "Clinical Interviews in the Geneva Style" directed by Easley. Jack and I were the two people who went every week to Steuben School in Kankakee Illinois to interview children in grades Kindergarten through Third Grade. Our research was focused on better understanding of children's concepts of number and numeral.
At that time we video taped all of our interviews. The technology was reel to reel. It was a big job to load up all of the video equipment early in the morning and drive to Kankakee, unload it and set it up in Steuben School.
One or two people interviewed all day long with another person operating the video equipment. Then we packed up and drove back to Champaign-Urbana. On our drive home we discussed and analyzed the interviews. Of course the main analysis was done later in the lab while observing the video It took hours and hours to record the audio and the video of each interview.
At times a faculty member, graduate student and or Univesity visitor who was interested in the project accompanied us to Steuben School to help us interview the children and operate the video equipment. Distinguised guests, such as Dora Whittaker from Nottingham, England were interested in the project. While the children were very interesting, Jack and I soon realized that it was important to also understand the teachers. At first we ate lunch with the teachers at school, but we found it hard to engage the teachers in discussions about math. We invited teachers to dinner after school and found it easier to discuss our project.
In the Spring of 1978 Jack, Linda Brandau and I were in the Science Laboratory Room at the University of Illinois preparing questions for the children and for the teachers when we decided to invite teachers to a weekend conference.
We were interested in having many perspectives on teaching children math, so our idea was to involve teachers, principals, University professors, graduate students and any others interested in our project. We thought we should have a name for our conference group. In our brainstorming we suggested many names for the group. One that we didn't use was Conversations Across Multiple Perspectives (CAMP). The Name we chose was DIME, Dialogues in Math Education. Later it was changed to Dialogues in Methods of Education.
So that was the beginning of DIME. We invited the Steuben teachers to a conference at the University of Illinois. It was held in the Education Building in CIRCE rooms. Later in the year we had another DIME conference and invited the Steuben teachers and also teachers from the Urbana schools. Champaign schools were involved later. We found teachers were much more willing to discuss problems of teaching when away from their school and with teachers from other schools.
Teachers from other places became involved in DIME. As a way to help the Kankakee teachers teach math Jack invited Hal Taylor to demonstrate teaching math to Susan Shadid's students. Hal became interested in DIME and invited Michigan teachers to a DIME meeting in Urbana. Michigan teachers became involved in DIME. Dick and Lynn Elsholz from West Bloomfield, Michigan became involved and are still regular members.
A DIME member Christy Brinkley left teaching in Urbana to be a Principal in Carlinville, Illinois. She brought Carlinville teachers to DIME and they were involved.
Deb Gilman, a teacher from Florida, attended a DIME meeting in Carlinville and she invited Dr. Bernadine Stake to Florida to talk to teachers in her school about DIME. Deb started DIME in Florida. Deb invited Dr. Jack Easley and Elizabeth to her school and Florida DIME members came to Illinois for DIME meetings.
There are only a few highlights of the beginning of DIME as I see it. There is much more and many other people who have been involved in DIME througout the years. The dates, times of meetings, discussions and all would be interesting to record.