ABSTRACT
Although mathematics is an ancient discipline, studied systematically by students even in Pythagorean times, mathematics education as a discipline in its own right is very young, having originated as an independent field of research on the learning of mathematics about 30 years ago. Since then, many mathematics education departments have been founded at universities and many scientific congresses and conferences held. Numerous research journals appear regularly and dozens of books summing up the research are published every year. The feeling is that of a growing and constantly expanding field. In recent years many handbooks and summary books on maths education have been published (Bishop et al., 1996; English, 1997; Grouws, 1992; Kilpatrick, 1994; Nesher and Kilpatrick, 1990; Steffe and Gale, 1995; Verschaffel, 1993a).
