PRE-PRINT OF BOOK REVIEW TO APPEAR IN EDUCATIONAL STUDIES IN MATHEMATICS

The number of theories used in mathematics education research keeps growing, especially since what Stephen Lerman describes as the field’s “social turn ” (p. 103) in the 1990s. What does this proliferation of theory mean for our field? How can we synthesize findings from so many perspectives and frameworks in order to make progress? In Theories of Mathematics Education: Seeking New Frontiers, a multitude of voices discuss this abundance of theory. The book contains 19 parts, most of which consist of a thematic chapter, at least one commentary on that chapter, and a preface, resulting in a grand total of 60 pieces written by 52 contributors from 13 countries. To make the endeavor even more complex, about a third of the book’s chapters have been published previously, many as articles in 2005 and 2006 issues of Zentralblatt für Didaktik der Mathematik (ZDM), enabling each such chapter to be explicitly commented on not only by its preface and commentaries but also by many of the other chapters in the book. The purpose of this innovative and elaborate commentary structure is to put these theories and observations, many of which have already appeared in some form elsewhere, into conversation with one another. The resulting interplay of comment and interpretation feels like a boisterous town hall meeting: dynamic, diverse, and sometime