The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought increased attention to the critical mathematical literacy of citizens in the United States and around the world. A statistically and mathematically literate society is crucial for ensuring that citizens are able to sift through political rhetoric to maintain life-saving procedures such as social…

Tasks play an important role in mathematics education, as they provide opportunities for students to develop their competencies and to cognitively engage with the mathematical content. The potential for cognitive activation as a central feature of a mathematical task has been considered in numerous studies, mostly as a didactical analysis by means…

Mathematics teaching is challenging particularly for teachers who have just started their careers. Research on this sort of teacher has focused separately on their knowledge, identity, or instructional quality. Yet, teaching mathematics as a profession requires synthetic and comprehensive competency. To fill this gap, this study investigates the…

This article builds upon a systematic review of 53 articles in international research journals and makes three main contributions. First, it develops a method for identifying motives, values, and assumptions in research by analysing segments of text in journal articles. Second, it represents a reflective account of research within the field of…

Definitions are an integral aspect of mathematics. In particular, they form the backbone of deductive reasoning and facilitate precision in mathematical communication. However, when multiple non-equivalent definitions for the same term exist, their ability to serve these purposes can be called into question. While ambiguity can be productive, the…

The transition from school to university mathematics is a challenging process for many students, which is reflected in high dropout rates during the first year at university. Using mediation analysis, we want to shed light on the role of students' attitudes towards mathematics--especially their interest in mathematics and their mathematical…

Although reasoning is a central concept in mathematics education research, the discipline is still in need of a coherent theoretical framework of mathematical reasoning. With respect to epistemological problems in the dominant discourses on proof, mathematical modelling, and post-truth politics in the discipline, and in accordance with trends in…

In recent years, the field of mathematics education has witnessed the emergence of several journal rankings. Within these rankings, Ibero-American journals have had little--to almost no--presence. This raises awareness on the current state of journal indexes and on what these indexes do and how they have been used in constituting sites of…

Formulas are involved in most parts of the mathematical curriculum in upper secondary education and in everyday mathematics classrooms, but research shows that students have difficulties using formulas adequately. When students are presented with a task, the task activates a conceptual frame in the students, making them perceive formulas in a…

This paper reports from a case study which explores kindergarten children's mathematical abstraction in a teaching--learning activity about reflection symmetry. From a dialectical perspective, abstraction is here conceived as a process, as a genuine part of human activity, where the learner establishes "a point of view from which the concrete…

Mathematics-specific learning difficulties and disabilities (MLD) have received increasing attention in scholarly research. In this study, we place MLD research in its wider context of risk societies by discussing the manufacturing of MLD as "a risk." This framing of MLD builds on a certain idea of "hope" in how research could…

Isomorphism and homomorphism are topics central to abstract algebra, but research on mathematicians' views of these topics, especially with respect to sameness, remains limited. This study examines open response survey data from 197 mathematicians on how sameness could be helpful or harmful when studying isomorphism and homomorphism. Using…

Maturity and citizenship in a democracy require that laypersons are able to critically evaluate experts' use of mathematics. Learning to critically reflect on the use of mathematics, including the acquisition of the mathematical knowledge and skills required to that end, has been repeatedly postulated as an indispensable goal of compulsory…

Noticing the strengths in students' mathematical thinking is a critical skill that teachers need to develop, but it can be challenging due to the prevalence of deficit-based thinking in mathematics education. To address this challenge, a teacher education course was designed to encourage prospective teachers to engage in critical reflection on…

When language is defined narrowly in mathematics classrooms, racially and linguistically minoritized students in classrooms could be systematically positioned as "learners of deficiency." Recent scholarship calls for expanding the notion of language to emphasize embodied expression of mathematical ideas. Taking a critical perspective to…