This editorial elaborates on how a well-constructed theoretical framework strengthens a research study and the reporting of research for publication.

The multiplication principle (MP) is a fundamental aspect of combinatorial enumeration, serving as an effective tool for solving counting problems and underlying many key combinatorial formulas. In this study, the authors used guided reinvention to investigate 2 undergraduate students’ reasoning about the MP, and they sought to answer the following research questions: How do students come to understand and make sense of the MP? Specifically, while a pair of students reinvented a statement of the MP, how did they attend to and reason about key mathematical features of the MP?

This article reports on a metasynthesis of 35 qualitative reports of social justice mathematics enactments in diverse classroom contexts. Critical Race Theory serves as a guiding framework for analyzing possibilities and limitations of these enactments to address racial inequities in mathematics education. Promising practices and implications for future research are identified based on this synthesis.

The stories of high-achieving African American mathematics students are gaining prominence in the research literature. In this multiple-case study, the author uses a critical race theoretical frame to document and analyze the experiences of 4 mathematically persistent African American male students who earned undergraduate degrees in mathematics and subsequently enrolled in mathematics or mathematics education graduate programs.