Future themes of mathematics education research: an international survey before and during the pandemic

Abstract

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 mathematics education, teacher professional development, technology, affect, equity, and assessment. During the pandemic (November 2020), we asked respondents: Has the pandemic changed your view on the themes of mathematics education research for the coming decade? If so, how? Many of the 108 respondents saw the importance of their original themes reinforced (45), specified their initial responses (43), and/or added themes (35) (these categories were not mutually exclusive). Overall, they seemed to agree that the pandemic functions as a magnifying glass on issues that were already known, and several respondents pointed to the need to think ahead on how to organize education when it does not need to be online anymore. We end with a list of research challenges that are informed by the themes and respondents’ reflections on mathematics education research.

Making Good of a Pandemic: A Long-Distance Remedial Summer Course in Calculus

“…[18] for a panoramic review of the state of the art and [19][20][21][22] for the Italian context). The COVID-19 pandemic made at-distance teaching the only viable possibility, but one should take notice of its effects on teachers' praxeologies ( [23]) and evaluate the advantages in assessments-such as the greater flexibility in test-taking and faster scoring-towards the importance "that mathematics education should be for all students, including those who have special needs, who live in poverty" ( [24]).…”

The time is out of joint. Teacher subjectivity during COVID-19

“…Unlike with the previously mentioned CT experiences, the cultural change teachers have faced during the COVID-19 emergency has not been a training experience proposed, controlled and accompanied by any group of researchers. Rather, it was a violent and uncontrolled cultural change that teachers had to face at a moment of extreme isolation, since communication with and among students was to be necessarily combined with technological tools, changing the nature of communication (Engelbrecht et al, 2020b )—so that researchers have raised the question regarding what kind of teachers’ professional development is needed in this new context and how professional development courses should be designed (Bakker et al, 2021 ). Despite the fact that CT experiences and the COVID-19 pandemic are based on different assumptions, the crises we observed in Italian teachers in this emergency time has sent us back to the crisis experiences which is the main assumption of the training process through CT. For this reason, we identified a framework to help us read teachers’ crises in relation to subjectivity with a new lens.…”

“…The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic was a big challenge for schools and education institutions all over the world (Bakker et al, 2021 ; Engelbrecht et al, 2020a , 2020b ). Teaching within such a new context constitutes a real problematic issue for teachers, in our perspective.…”

Reimagining Mathematics Education for the 21st Century in the 21st Century

“…They are by no means the only themes that will surface when we reimagine mathematics education for the 21 st Century, of course (see, for example, Bakker, Cai & Zenger, 2021). The threat to globalization as we know it, and the flow-on effects of the ongoing trade war between the world's two biggest economies, might also shape mathematics education in ways which we cannot yet predict.…”