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.

Using curriculum-specific tools for measuring fidelity of implementation is an essential yet often overlooked aspect of examining relationships among textbooks, teaching, and student learning. This "Brief Report" describes the variety of ways that curriculum implementation is measured and argues that there is an urgent need to develop curriculum-sensitive tools for analyzing classroom practice. It also outlines the use of the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM)  theory to develop analytical tools for measuring implementation of two middle-grades reform mathematics curricula: Connected Mathematics and MathThematics . The report also presents next steps in this program of research.

Recent research on mathematics reforms in the United States indicates that the reforms are not yet widely implemented. Generally, this claim results from looking at the extent to which teachers use curricular materials or engage in particular classroom practices. This article moves beyond disparate questions of use and practice to examine interactions between teachers and curricula as evidenced by their enactments of whole-number lessons from a Standards -based curriculum.

This study investigated introductory calculus students’ spontaneous reasoning about limit concepts guided by an interactionist theory of metaphorical reasoning developed by Max Black. Students’ reasoning had significant implications for the images they formed and the claims and justifications they provided about multiple limit concepts.

This article reports on an investigation of how teachers of geometry perceived an episode of instruction presented to them as a case of engaging students in proving. Confirming what was hypothesized, participants found it remarkable that a teacher would allow a student to make an assumption while proving. But they perceived this episode in various ways, casting the episode as one of as many as 10 different stories. Those different castings of the episode make use of intellectual resources for professional practice that practitioners could use to negotiate the norms of a situation in which they had made a tactical but problematic move.

A review of What's Math Got to Do With It? Helping Children Learn to Love Their Least Favorite Subject-and Why It's Important for America . Jo Boaler. (2008). New York: Viking/Penguin Group. 288 pp. ISBN 987-0-670-01952-6. $24.95 (hb). $16.00 (pb) Reviewed by Walter G. Secada, University of Miami.

A review of Preparing Mathematics and Science Teachers for Diverse Classrooms: Promising Strategies for Transformative Padagogy . Alberto J. Rodriguez and Richard S. Kitchen (Eds.) (2005). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 273 pp. ISBN 0-8058-4680 (pb) $37.95. ISBN 978-0-8058-4679-9 (hb) $94.95. Reviewed by Jo Clay Olson, Washington State University .