Qualitative Research Methods In Mathematics Education

This volume documents a range of qualitative research approaches emerged within mathematics education over the last three decades, whilst at the same time revealing their underlying methodologies. Continuing the discussion as begun in the two 2003 ZDM issues dedicated to qualitative empirical methods, this book presents astate of the art overview on qualitative research in mathematics education and beyond. The structure of the book allows the reader to use it as an actual guide for the selection of an appropriate methodology, on a basis of both theoretical depth and practical implications. The methods and examples illustrate how different methodologies come to life when applied to a specific question in a specific context. Many of the methodologies described are also applicable outside mathematics education, but the examples provided are chosen so as to situate the approach in a mathematical context.

Mathematics education research in undergraduate mathematics has increased significantly in the last decade and shows no signs of abating in the near future. Thus far, this research has often been associated with innovations in curriculum such as calculus reform, statistics education, and the use of computational and graphing technology in instruction. Mathematics education research, carefully conducted, is something far more fundamental and widely useful than might be implied by its use by the advocates of innovation in undergraduate mathematics education. Most simply, mathematics education research is inquiry by carefully developed research methods aimed at providing evidence about the nature and relationships of many mathematics learning and teaching phenomena. It seeks to clarify the phenomena, illuminate them, explain how they are related to other phenomena, and explain how this may be related to undergraduate mathematics course organization and teaching. This book-the collaborative effort of a research mathematician, mathematics education researchers who work in a research mathematics department and a professional librarian-introduces research mathematicians to education research. The work presents a non-jargon introduction for educational research, surveys the more commonly used research methods, along with their rationales and assumptions, and provides background and careful discussions to help research mathematicians read or listen to education research more critically. This guide is of practical interest to university-based research mathematicians, as it introduces the methodology of quantitative and qualitative research in education; provides critical guidelines for assessing the reliability and validity of mathematics education research; and explains how to use online database resources to locate education research. The book will also be valuable to graduate students in mathematics who are planning academic careers, and to mathematics department chairs and their deans.

The Handbook of Research Design in Mathematics and Science Education is based on results from an NSF-supported project (REC 9450510) aimed at clarifying the nature of principles that govern the effective use of emerging new research designs in mathematics and science education. A primary goal is to describe several of the most important types of research designs that: * have been pioneered recently by mathematics and science educators; * have distinctive characteristics when they are used in projects that focus on mathematics and science education; and * have proven to be especially productive for investigating the kinds of complex, interacting, and adapting systems that underlie the development of mathematics or science students and teachers, or for the development, dissemination, and implementation of innovative programs of mathematics or science instruction. The volume emphasizes research designs that are intended to radically increase the relevance of research to practice, often by involving practitioners in the identification and formulation of the problems to be addressed or in other key roles in the research process. Examples of such research designs include teaching experiments, clinical interviews, analyses of videotapes, action research studies, ethnographic observations, software development studies (or curricula development studies, more generally), and computer modeling studies. This book's second goal is to begin discussions about the nature of appropriate and productive criteria for assessing (and increasing) the quality of research proposals, projects, or publications that are based on the preceding kind of research designs. A final objective is to describe such guidelines in forms that will be useful to graduate students and others who are novices to the fields of mathematics or science education research. The NSF-supported project from which this book developed involved a series of mini conferences in which leading researchers in mathematics and science education developed detailed specifications for the book, and planned and revised chapters to be included. Chapters were also field tested and revised during a series of doctoral research seminars that were sponsored by the University of Wisconsin's OERI-supported National Center for Improving Student Learning and Achievement in Mathematics and Science. In these seminars, computer-based videoconferencing and www-based discussion groups were used to create interactions in which authors of potential chapters served as "guest discussion leaders" responding to questions and comments from doctoral students and faculty members representing more than a dozen leading research universities throughout the USA and abroad. A Web site with additional resource materials related to this book can be found at http://www.soe.purdue.edu/smsc/lesh/ This internet site includes directions for enrolling in seminars, participating in ongoing discussion groups, and submitting or downloading resources which range from videotapes and transcripts, to assessment instruments or theory-based software, to publications or data samples related to the research designs being discussed.

The purpose of this Open Access compendium, written by experienced researchers in mathematics education, is to serve as a resource for early career researchers in furthering their knowledge of the state of the field and disseminating their research through publishing. To accomplish this, the book is split into four sections: Empirical Methods, Important Mathematics Education Themes, Academic Writing and Academic Publishing, and a section Looking Ahead. The chapters are based on workshops that were presented in the Early Career Researcher Day at the 13th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-13). The combination of presentations on methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives shaping the field in mathematics education research, as well as the strong emphasis on academic writing and publishing, offered strong insight into the theoretical and empirical bases of research in mathematics education for early career researchers in this field. Based on these presentations, the book provides a state-of-the-art overview of important theories from mathematics education and the broad variety of empirical approaches currently widely used in mathematics education research. This compendium supports early career researchers in selecting adequate theoretical approaches and adopting the most appropriate methodological approaches for their own research. Furthermore, it helps early career researchers in mathematics education to avoid common pitfalls and problems while writing up their research and it provides them with an overview of the most important journals for research in mathematics education, helping them to select the right venue for publishing and disseminating their work.

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.

This accessible volume offers a unique set of research exemplars for science, mathematics and technology educators. The volume explores the important challenge of how to translate leading-edge methodologies into practical research strategies and techniques. It is the first book on the market that deals specifically with postmodern approaches to research in the field of science education and is a tightly edited volume that provides a coherent treatment of the issues.

Research and Supervision in Mathematics and Science Education provides student researchers and their supervisors with information about both the essentials of planning, conducting, reporting, and publishing qualitative research, and the characteristics of quality supervision. It is focused primarily for postgraduate research students in mathematics and science education and their supervisors. It will also be of interest to students and faculty in other disciplines that use educational and sociological research paradigms. The volume builds on two phenomena of recent years: first, the increasing momentum of postgraduate research in mathematics and science education and, second, the resulting need of those involved for knowledge about doing research and about engaging in quality supervision. The decision to address both research and supervision in one volume is a response to the fact that faculty who supervise postgraduate research often are in need of resources covering not only aspects of project and thesis supervision, but also the knowledge to assist students in research design, especially in the qualitative field. Drawing on recent research and practice, the authors of the chapters in this book illustrate approaches and strategies that have been used successfully with, and by, postgraduate students. The book also has a strong future orientation, describing how postgraduate supervision and research will change as more and more students gain access to and make use of the vast array of technological resources now available. A necessary and unique addition to books in the field of postgraduate research and supervision, this volume's particular appeal stems from its practical approach, its creative future perspective, and the wide generalizability of the thinking and ideas it presents.