In 1994, Prof. Sembiring (Department of Mathematics, ITB) met Jan de Lange, who was the keynote speaker at the ICMI Conference in Shanghai. This meeting marked the beginning of a major initiative to reform mathematics education in Indonesia. Prof. Sembiring invited Jan de Lange to contribute to the development of a more contextual approach to mathematics education.
In 1998, a Dutch team led by Jan de Lange introduced Realistic Mathematics Education (RME), which later evolved into Pendidikan Matematika Realistik Indonesia (PMRI). Jan de Lange proposed to the Indonesian Ministry of Education, through Driven Satrio, to send Indonesian lecturers to pursue doctoral studies in RME at the Freudenthal Institute, Utrecht University.
Six doctoral candidates were selected by a joint Dutch-Indonesian committee and sent to the Netherlands under the PGSM Scholarship. Four of them successfully completed their PhDs in 2002: Sutarto (ULM), Ahmad Fauzan (UNP), Dian Armanto (Unimed), and Zulkardi (UNSRI).
In 2000, Jan de Lange also introduced the PISA program during his keynote speech at the National Conference on Mathematics at ITB. The initiative was further developed by Zulkardi at Sriwijaya University, eventually becoming a significant field of research and a major national competition. A key research focus emerged: developing PISA-like mathematics problems to help Indonesian students engage with real-world math contexts—especially given the limited number of PISA problems publicly available from the OECD.
Since 2006, the Dissemination of PMRI (Do-PMRI) project has been coordinated by Kees Hoogland, Maarten Dolk, and Prof. Sembiring. Zulkardi has led the development and management of the official website for the PMRI Development and Research Center (P4MRI), based at Sriwijaya University.
2010 – Continuing the PMRI Movement
Following the completion of the Do-PMRI project, the development of PMRI continued through the establishment of the International Master Program on Mathematics Education (IMPOME), a collaboration between Sriwijaya University, State University of Surabaya, and Utrecht University. This program ran from 2010 to 2015 and produced approximately 50 master’s graduates in RME/PMRI. The program was funded by DIKTI (for one year of study in Indonesia) and Nuffic Neso (for one year in the Netherlands).
2016 – Two Decades of PMRI in Indonesia
PMRI’s two-decade journey was highlighted in various international forums:
EARCOME6, Phuket, Thailand
The PMRI team was invited as one of the plenary speakers alongside experts from New Zealand, Taiwan, Malaysia, and South Korea. The presentation slides are available at the following link:
The PMRI UNSRI team was specially invited by the ICME13 committee in Hamburg to showcase the development of RME in Indonesia. The event was held alongside teams from several countries developing RME, including the USA, the UK, and South Africa. The following is information from the Thematics Afternoon event, where the PMRI Unsri-Zulkardi and Ratu Ima team appeared in front of hundreds of ICME13 Hamburg 2016 participants, discussing the development of PMRI after 20 years in Indonesia.
In the same year, a doctoral program in PMRI was formally established at Universitas Sriwijaya with approval from the Ministry of Education. This was a direct continuation of the successful IMPOME master’s program. As of 2025, the doctoral program has graduated over 25 PhDs who are now contributing to mathematics education across Indonesia.
