Digital technology is indispensable for doing and learning statistics. When technology is used in mathematics education, the learning of concepts and the development of techniques for using a digital tool are known to intertwine. So far, this intertwinement of techniques and conceptual understanding, known as instrumental genesis, has received…

Recent developments in cognitive and educational science highlight the role of the body in learning. Novel digital technologies increasingly facilitate bodily interaction. Aiming for understanding of the body's role in learning mathematics with technology, we reconsider the instrumental approach from a radical embodied cognitive science…

Before the pandemic (2019), we asked: "On what themes should research in mathematics education focus in the coming decade?" The 229 responses from 44 countries led to eight themes plus considerations about mathematics education research itself. The themes can be summarized as teaching approaches, goals, relations to practices outside…

Educators in mathematics have long been concerned about students' motivation, anxiety, and other affective characteristics. Typically, research into affect focuses on one theoretical construct (e.g., emotion, motivation, beliefs, or interest). However, we introduce the term affective field to account for a person's various affective factors…

The goal of this article is to introduce the topic of "learning to reason from samples," which is the focus of this special issue of "Educational Studies in Mathematics" on "statistical reasoning." Samples are data sets, taken from some wider universe (e.g., a population or a process) using a particular procedure…

Based on insights into the nature of vocational mathematical knowledge, we designed a computer tool with which students in laboratory schools at senior secondary vocational school level could develop a better proficiency in the proportional reasoning involved in dilution. We did so because we had identified computations of concentrations of…

We investigate the use and knowledge of graphs in the context of a large industrial factory. We are particularly interested in the question of "transparency", a question that has been extensively considered in the general literature on tool use and, more recently, by Michael Roth and his colleagues in the context of scientific work. Roth uses the…

Using Freudenthal's method of historical phenomenology, the history of statistics was investigated as a source of inspiration for instructional design. Based on systematically selected historical examples, hypotheses were formulated about how students could be supported in learning to reason with particular statistical concepts and graphs. Such a…

In recent years, semiotics has become an innovative theoretical framework in mathematics education. The purpose of this article is to show that semiotics can be used to explain learning as a process of experimenting with and communicating about one's own representations (in particular "diagrams") of mathematical problems. As a paradigmatic…