Commentary on On the Theoretical, Conceptual, and Philosophical Foundations for Research in Mathematics Education

Abstract

Lester’s paper is a significant contribution to mathematics education research (MER) because it sets a vision and provides a framework for mathematics education researchers to think about the purposes and nature of their field. My reaction to the paper is organized into three sections. In the first section I react to Lester’s concern about the current political forces in the U.S. to define scientific research in education rigidly, and offer a possible reason—apart from political ideology—for the emergence of these forces. In the second section I recapitulate Lester’s outline and model for theory-based research in mathematics education, and I interpret his paper as a call to the MER community to respond to the current political forces that (inappropriately) shape our field. Also, in this section, I describe reasons implied from Lester’s paper as to why graduate programs in mathematics education must strengthen the theory and philosophy components of their course requirements. The third, and final, section addresses the role of mathematical context in MER, a topic absent from the paper’s narrative. Despite the absence of such explicit discussion, I found in Lester’s paper important elements on which to base the argument that theory-based mathematics education research must be rooted in mathematical context. An implication of this argument is the need to strengthen the quality of the mathematics component in graduate programs in mathematics education. I will illustrate this argument and its implication with an example concerning the proof-versus-argumentation phenomenon.