Teachers Engaged in Research

Through the chapters in this volume we learn about the research foci and/ or questions that these classroom teachers are interested in examiningthe mathematics content through which they engaged their students in these explorations the data sources they used to make sense oftheir focus and questions and their roles in the research.An overarching theme through all the chapters in this volume is the learning and professional development that occurs through teacherresearch. What these authors learned about student learning and their own teaching practice far exceeded the focus of their particularresearch questions. For some the research validated their beliefs and instructional practices; for others it deepened or extended their understandingof mathematics or raised their expectations of students' capabilities. For all it is fair to say their research increased their awarenessof how students come to know and understand mathematics and enabled them to gain insight into the complexity of teaching. Lampert(2001) noted One reason teaching is a complex practice is that many of the problems a teacher must address to get students to learn occursimultaneously not one after another (p. 2). We as readers gain a window into these teachers' research within and about the complexity ofclassroom teaching.