Mathematics education research as a discipline is situated at the
confluence of an array of diffuse' seemingly incommensurable' and
radically divergent discourses. Research claims that have grown out of
mathematics education are wide-ranging and antagonistic rather than
circumscribed by hidebound disciplinary frames. While there has never
been a unified' totalising discipline of knowledge labelled 'mathematics
education research'' and while it has always been a contested terrain'
it is fair to say that the master paradigm out of which this field has
been generated has been that of cognitive psychology. Mainstream
mathematics education knowledges refracting the master discourse of
psychology --whereby cognition serves as the central privileged and
defining concept-- clearly delimits its possibilities for serving as a
social tool of democratic transformation. The central point of departure
of this new collection is that mathematics education research is
insufficiently univocal to support the type of uncompromising
interpretation that cognitive psychologists would bring to it. The
hallmark contribution of this pathbreaking volume edited by Paola Valero
and Robyn Zevenbergen is the paradigmatic shift the authors have
effected in the field of mathematics education research' taking up a
position at the faultline of socio-cultural analysis and critical
pedagogy.