Philosophical Considerations Always Already Entangled in Mathematics Education Research

In this paper, I explore how mathematics education research is always already entangled with and in ontological, epistemological, and ethical considerations—that is, philosophical considerations—of the researcher (or research team) from beginning to end. The danger in too much of the existing mathematics education research, however, is limited acknowledgement of how philosophical considerations drive both knowledge production and knowledge dissemination in the field. Illustrating how the concepts ontology, epistemology, and ethics are made sense of across the research paradigm spectrum—predict, understand, emancipate, and deconstruct—sheds light on not only the possible divergences in approaches to research (mathematics education or otherwise) but also the interrelatedness of the concepts