This issue of the J ournal for Research in Mathematics Education is the first in which my name appears as editor, and this occasion leads me to reflect on what contributes to the success of a journal such as JRME .

Sets of mathematics problems are generally arranged in 1 of 2 ways. With blocked practice, all problems are drawn from the preceding lesson. With mixed review, students encounter a mixture of problems drawn from different lessons. Although mixed review is more demanding than blocked practice, the apparent benefits of mixed review suggest that this easily adopted strategy is underused.

Functions are all around us, disguised as actions on concrete objects. Our data show that the intuitions about change and invariance entailed by the action-on-objects scheme, although helpful in earlier stages of learning functions, may later come to clash with the formal concepts of function and of composition of functions.

The primary purpose in this article is to propose an interpretive scheme for analyzing the identities that students develop in mathematics classrooms that can inform instructional design and teaching.

M athematics Education at Highly Effective Schools That Serve the Poor: Strategies for Change . (2007). Richard S. Kitchen, Julie DePree, Sylvia Celedón-Pattichis, and Jonathan Brinkerhoff. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. xvi + 231 pp. ISBN 0-8058-5689-7 $27.50 (paperback) ISBN 8059-5688-9 $69.96 (hardcover). Reviewed by Joanne Rossi Becker, San José State University .

The Journal for Research in Mathematics Education (JRME) is seeking innovative ways to promote and support research that has the potential to encourage and sustain conversations at the intersection between research and practice. As such, the journal plans to pilot special issues of JRME that will address topics of key importance that are considered to be at the boundary of research and practice. The special issue will be accessible to all NCTM members online and become an NCTM publication upon completion.