This first editorial in a series, building on 50 years of JRME archives, explores what counts as a significant research question in mathematics education research, where significant research questions come from, and how researchers can develop their manuscripts to make the case for the significance of their research questions.

This study examined the genre of undergraduate mathematical proof writing by asking mathematicians and undergraduate students to read 7 partial proofs and identify and discuss uses of mathematical language that were out of the ordinary with respect to what they considered conventional mathematical proof writing. 

The authors report a novel survey that narrows the gap between information about teachers’ knowledge of fraction arithmetic provided, on the one hand, by measures practical to administer at scale and, on the other, by close analysis of moment-to-moment cognition. In particular, the survey measured components that would support reasoning directly with measured quantities, not by executing computational algorithms, to solve problems. Our results provide insight into teachers’ knowledge resources for enacting standards-based instruction in fraction arithmetic and an example of new possibilities for mathematics education research afforded by recent advances in psychometric modeling.

A review of International Handbook of Research in Statistics Education