The Practice Theme in Mathematics Education: Development of a French-English Collaboration on the Role of Theories

In this introductory article, we describe how the Special Issue came about, as a result of three years of collaboration. We show how this collaboration developed with a focus on the role of theory. We draw out themes across the individual papers, making use of the concept of ‘boundary objects’ that have allowed the comparison and enrichment of our different perspectives. We suggest that the work of bringing together researchers, from different traditions and on a sustained basis, is more important now than ever, in a context in which policy makers are increasingly looking at ‘solutions’ to problems in education from the other, seemingly more successful, countries (e.g. as measured by international comparison tests). We conclude with questions for further research, both for our particular collaborative group and more widely.