During the past 3 years, one of my tasks as an associate editor for the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education ( JRME ) has been reading every submission to the journal. Yes, every submission. Reflecting now on more than 800 manuscripts leaves me with an energizing observation: Mathematics education research is a robust enterprise that embraces many interests and approaches as represented by substantially more submissions and generally better manuscripts.

The recent publication of two important documents, Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making (NCTM, 2009) and the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010), provides a timely opportunity to take stock of the various recommendations and policies aimed at improving the quality of students' high school mathematics education in the United States. In this article, we capitalize on  this opportunity to reflect on national trends in high school mathematics, to highlight current calls and efforts for improving high school mathematics and research on which these recommendations are based, and to suggest areas for which further research is needed.

This Research Commentary addresses the need for standards for describing mathematics professional development in mathematics education research reports. Considering that mathematics professional development is an emerging research field, it is timely to set expectations for what constitutes high-quality reporting in this field.

The development of patterning strategies during the year prior to formal schooling was studied in 53 children from 2 similar preschools. One preschool implemented a 6-month intervention focusing on repeating and spatial patterns. Children from the intervention group demonstrated greater understanding of unit of repeat and spatial structuring , and most were also able to extend and explain growing patterns 1 year later. The findings indicate a fundamental link between patterning and multiplicative reasoning through the development of composite units.

This article presents an analytical approach for documenting the identities for teaching that mathematics teachers negotiate as they participate in two or more communities that define high-quality teaching differently. Drawing on data from the first two2 years of a collaboration with a group of middle school mathematics teachers, the article focuses on a critical initial condition for teachers to improve their practice-determining that the effort required is worthwhile. The results speak directly to a central issue that arises when supporting teachers' efforts to improve their instructional practices: their motivation for affiliating with a vision of teaching that involves centering instruction on student thinking.