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ZDM 2005 Vol. 37 (6)

Analyses vital questions go unanswered while means, standard deviations, and t-tests pile up. (Scandura 1967, p. iii) A similar sentiment was expressed in the same year by another prominent U.S. researcher, Robert Davis: In a society which has modernized agriculture, medicine, industrial production, communication, transportation, and even warfare as ours has done, it iscompelling to ask why we have experienced such difficulty in making more satisfactory improvements in education. (Davis, 1967, p. 53) Davis insisted then that the community of mathematics education researchers needed to abandon its reliance on experimental and quasi-experimental studies for ones situated in a more interpretive perspective. Put another way, the social and cultural conditions withinwhich our research must take place require that we adopt perspectives and employ approaches that are very different from those used in fields such as medicine, physics, and agriculture. Today, we education researchers find ourselves in the position of having to defend our resistance to being told that the primary characteristics of educational research that is likely to receive financial supportfrom the U.S. Department of Education are “randomized experiments” and “controlled clinical trials” (U.S. Department of Education, 2002). To a large extent, the argument against the use of experimental methods has focused on the organizational complexity of schools and the failure of experimental methods used in the past to provide useful, valid knowledge (Cook, 2001). However, largely ignored inthe discussions of the nature of educational research has been consideration of the conceptual, structural foundations of our work. To be more specific, the role of theory and the nature of the philosophical underpinnings of our research have been absent. This is very unfortunate because scholars in other social science disciplines (e.g., anthropology, psychology, sociology) often justify theirresearch investigations on grounds of developing understanding by building or testing theories and models, and almost always they design their research programs around frameworks of some sort. In addition, researchers in these disciplines pay close attention to the philosophical assumptions upon which their work is based. In contrast, the current infatuation in the U.S. with “what works” studies seemsto leave education researchers with less latitude to conduct studies to advance theoretical and model-building goals and they are expected to adopt philosophical perspectives that often run counter to their own. In this paper, I address three basic questions: What is the role of theory in education research? How does one’s philosophical stance influence the sort of research one does? And, whatshould be the goals of mathematics education research? 2. The role of theory Although MER was aptly characterized less than 15 years ago by Kilpatrick (1992) as largely atheoretical, a perusal

On the theoretical, conceptual, and philosophical foundations for research in mathematics education
Frank K. Lester, Jr., Indiana University
Abstract: The current infatuation in the U.S. with “what works”studies seems to leave education researchers with less latitude to conduct studies to advance theoretical and model-building goals and they are expected to adopt philosophical perspectives that often run counter to their own. Three basic questions are addressed in this article: What is the role of theory in education research? How does one’s philosophical stance influence the sort of research onedoes? And, What should be the goals of mathematics education research? Special attention is paid to the importance of having a conceptual framework to guide one’s research and to the value of acknowledging one’s philosophical stance in considering what counts as evidence.

ZDM-Classifikation: B10, D20, E20

1. Establishing a context The current emphasis in the United States being placed on...