Introduction

Abstract

Research in mathematics education is a young enterprise. For only about a century has mathematics education been recognized as a domain in which serious scholarly work can be done, and some might argue that its status today remains precarious. The earliest international research effort in mathematics education was the set of studies produced for the International Commission on the Teaching of Mathematics (ICTM) from 1908 to 1914 (see Schubring,1988). These studies reported on such matters as national curricula and teacher-training activities in mathematics, but they did not in general rely on comprehensive evidence system-atically gathered. Instead, they often reflected little more than one or two professors’ opinions. As international studies waned with the onset of the First World War, researchers in mathematics education began to engage in what were primarily psychological inquiries, asking how children learn mathematics and how one might improve that learning (for a fuller account, see Kilpatrick, 1992). Over the years, communities of researchers in mathematics education developed in many countries, and when the ICTM was reconstituted as the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction in 1964, these communities began to come together and to see that they shared similar interests and problems. Mathematics education research was broadening its focus from children’s learning to encompass matters of teaching, curriculum, assessment, teacher education, professional development, and policy. The methods that mathematics education researchers used were also proliferating as they adopted and modified techniques used in sociology, developmental and social psychology, and anthropology, among other fields. Given this expansion, the post-Second World War generation of researchers recognized the value of exchanging ideas about research with their counterparts elsewhere, and the various communities gradually realized that they were at times taking different approaches to similar problems.