Pleasures, Power, and Pitfalls of Writing up Mathematics Education Research

Abstract

Research in mathematics education consists of both doing a study and reporting its thesis and conclusions. Communicating one's research clearly and adequately is at least as important as conducting it proficiently. At ICME-13, we each conducted a workshop on academic writing in which we drew upon our experiences as writers and editors to acquaint novice researchers with potential benefits and costs of reporting in our field. In this chapter, we present some of the points made in our workshops. We look at the nature of research in our field, the elements of a research report, its structure, the importance of choosing an appropriate publication outlet, and some pitfalls of academic writing. The chapter ends by reprinting a satirical editorial that underlines some of the ways in which a research report can go wrong.