ABSTRACT
Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t. —Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2, Line 205
Four hundred years post-Hamlet, researchers in mathematics education might well invert Polonius’s famous comment: In contemporary research, though this be method, yet there is madness in’t seems fairly close to the mark. In this essay, I unravel some of the reasons for the madness and the method in contemporary research, suggest criteria regarding the appropriateness and adequacy of investigatory methods and their theoretical underpinnings, and identify some productive pathways for the development of beginning researchers’ skills and understandings.
