The role of large-scale studies in mathematics education

The goal for this monograph has been to present the state of the art in large-scale studies in mathematics education. Although the chapters collected here are not intended to be a comprehensive compendium of such research, this selection of work does serve both to represent large-scale studies in the field of mathematics education and to raise awareness of the issues that arise in conducting such studies. As can be seen from the studies included in this volume, the term “large-scale study” can cover a wide variety of research endeavors. Indeed, as we indicated in the introductory chapter, the IES and NSF Common Guidelines (U.S. Department of Education & National Science Foundation, 2013) recognize many different types of research, and large-scale studies can fall into more than one of these categories. The different types of research have correspondingly different purposes which require different sample sizes and methods of analysis. Moreover, the findings from different types of research have different degrees of generalizability. Despite these many differences, there are common features that large-scale studies share. For example, large-scale studies require large sample sizes, although exactly how large “large” depends on the design of the study. In contrast to small-scale studies, large-scale studies usually employ complex statistical analysis and have the potential to produce more readily generalizable results than small-scale studies.