The editors and contributors of these ten articles focus on the idea that communication includes both what is happening and being said among participants in a classroom and also the politics, values and ideologies that serve as the foundation of the practice. They describe how communication thereby involves register, representation and contexts through media-human interfaces in the classroom and in interpreting mathematics as a text, how communication in mathematics teaching becomes social interaction in cooperative settings and classroom activities, and how communication translates into practice, community, identity and policy.

In the mid 1980s, the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI) inaugurated a series of studies in mathematics education by comm- sioning one on the influence of technology and informatics on mathematics and its teaching. These studies are designed to thoroughly explore topics of c- temporary interest, by gathering together a group of experts who prepare a Study Volume that provides a considered assessment of the current state and a guide to further developments. Studies have embraced a range of issues, some central, such as the teaching of algebra, some closely related, such as the impact of history and psychology, and some looking at mathematics education from a particular perspective, such as cultural differences between East and West. These studies have been commissioned at the rate of about one per year. Once the ICMI Executive decides on the topic, one or two chairs are selected and then, in consultation with them, an International Program Committee (IPC) of about 12 experts is formed. The IPC then meets and prepares a Discussion Document that sets forth the issues and invites interested parties to submit papers. These papers are the basis for invitations to a Study Conference, at which the various dimensions of the topic are explored and a book, the Study Volume, is sketched out. The book is then put together in collaboration, mainly using electronic communication. The entire process typically takes about six years.

This volume is a forward–looking intersection of Sociological perspectives on mathematics classrooms and socio-political perspectives on mathematics education. The first perspective has generated a substantial body of knowledge in the mathematics education. Interactionist research has deepened our understanding of interaction processes, socio-mathematical norms and the negotiation of meaning, generating a ‘micro-sociology’ or a ‘micro-ethnography’ of the mathematics classroom. More recently, socio-political perspectives on mathematics education interrelate educational practices in mathematics with macro-social issues of social equity, class, and race and with the policies that regulate institutionalized mathematics education. This book documents, strings together and juxtaposes research that uses ethnographical classroom data to explain, on the one hand, how socio-political issues play out in the mathematics class. On the other hand, it illuminates how class, race etc. affect the micro-sociology of the mathematics classroom. The volume advances the knowledge in the field by providing an empirical grounding of socio-political research on mathematics education, and it extends the frame in which mathematical classroom cultures are conceived.

International mathematics education researchers give a differentiated overview of views and beliefs of both teachers and students. Beliefs about how to teach mathematics have a high impact on the instructional practice of teachers. In the same way, views and beliefs about mathematics are an essential factor to explain achievement and performance of students. The 19th MAVI conference added a variety of research perspectives to the international discussions of mathematics related beliefs. The authors of this volume have compiled a rich selection of research results, which may further enhance the discussion of MAVI topics in the future.

An innovative contribution to educational research is to be found in this book. The book addresses the need to generate texts that assist educators and future educators in taking up new research and making sense of it. It offers unique approaches to interpreting research within the mathematics education field and takes its place in a growing set of resources. The book will appeal to teacher educators, student teachers, and mathematics education researchers alike.

Mathematics education research has blossomed into many different areas which we can see in the programmes of the ICME conferences as well as in the various survey articles in the Handbooks. However, all of these lines of research are trying to grapple with a common problem, the complexity of the process of learning mathematics.

During the past 30 years, researchers have made exciting progress in the science of learning (i.e., how people learn) and the science of instruction (i.e., how to help people learn). This second edition of the Handbook of Research on Learning and Instruction is intended to provide an overview of these research advances. With chapters written by leading researchers from around the world, this volume examines learning and instruction in a variety of learning environments including in classrooms and out of classrooms, and with a variety of learners including K-16 students and adult learners. Contributors to this volume demonstrate how and why educational practice should be guided by research evidence concerning what works in instruction. The Handbook is written at a level that is appropriate for graduate students, researchers, and practitioners interested in an evidence-based approach to learning and instruction. The book is divided into two sections: learning and instruction. The learning section consists of chapters on how people learn in reading, writing, mathematics, science, history, second language, and physical education, as well as how people acquire the knowledge and processes required for critical thinking, studying, self-regulation, and motivation. The instruction section consists of chapters on effective instructional methods—feedback, examples, questioning, tutoring, visualizations, simulations, inquiry, discussion, collaboration, peer modeling, and adaptive instruction. Each chapter in this second edition of the Handbook has been thoroughly revised to integrate recent advances in the field of educational psychology. Two chapters have been added to reflect advances in both helping students develop learning strategies and using technology to individualize instruction. As with the first edition, this updated volume showcases the best research being done on learning and instruction by traversing a broad array of academic domains, learning constructs, and instructional methods.

The picture on the front of this book is an illustration for Totakahini: The tale of the parrot, by Rabindranath Tagore, in which he satirized education as a magnificent golden cage. Opening the cage addresses mathematics education as a complex socio-political phenomenon, exploring the vast terrain that spans critique and politics. Opening the cage includes contributions from educators writing critically about mathematics education in diverse contexts. They demonstrate that mathematics education is politics, they investigate borderland positions, they address the nexus of mathematics, education, and power, and they explore educational possibilities. Mathematics education is not a free enterprise. It is carried on behind bars created by economic, political, and social demands. This cage might not be as magnificent as that in Tagore’s fable. But it is strong. Opening the cage is a critical and political challenge, and we may be surprised to see what emerges.

Language is deeply involved in learning mathematics as students both communicate and think about mathematical ideas. Because of this, teachers of English learners have particular challenges to overcome. Mathematical Thinking and Communication addresses perhaps the most significant challenge: providing access to mathematics for these students. For all students-and English learners in particular-access means finding effective, authentic ways to make language clear and thinking visible so they can reason more, speak more, and write more in mathematics. Based on extensive research and collaboration with teachers, coaches, and schools, Mark Driscoll, Johannah Nikula, and Jill Neumayer DePiper outline four principles for designing instruction that creates this kind of access: challenging tasks, multimodal representations, development of mathematical communication, and repeated structured practice. Starting from the perspective that English learners are capable of mathematical thinking (even as they are learning to express their ideas verbally), the authors highlight techniques for using gestures, drawings, models, manipulatives, and technology as tools for reasoning and communication. By embedding these visual representations into instruction-and encouraging their regular use-teachers support engagement in problem solving, facilitate mathematical dialogue, and notice evidence of students' thinking that propels them to create more engaging and equitable instruction. Enhanced by an extensive online collection of companion professional development resources, this book highlights classroom-ready strategies and routines for fostering mathematics success in all students and helping them recognize their potential.

Mathematics education research as a discipline is situated at the confluence of an array of diffuse‚ seemingly incommensurable‚ and radically divergent discourses. Research claims that have grown out of mathematics education are wide-ranging and antagonistic rather than circumscribed by hidebound disciplinary frames. While there has never been a unified‚ totalising discipline of knowledge labelled ‘mathematics education research’‚ and while it has always been a contested terrain‚ it is fair to say that the master paradigm out of which this field has been generated has been that of cognitive psychology. Mainstream mathematics education knowledges refracting the master discourse of psychology —whereby cognition serves as the central privileged and defining concept— clearly delimits its possibilities for serving as a social tool of democratic transformation. The central point of departure of this new collection is that mathematics education research is insufficiently univocal to support the type of uncompromising interpretation that cognitive psychologists would bring to it. The hallmark contribution of this pathbreaking volume edited by Paola Valero and Robyn Zevenbergen is the paradigmatic shift the authors have effected in the field of mathematics education research‚ taking up a position at the faultline of socio-cultural analysis and critical pedagogy.