Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow in Mathematics Education Research

As the editors of the previous edition of the Research in Mathematics Education in Australasia (Volume 10) covering the period 2016–2019, the task falls to us to make some form of reflective comment on mathematics education research within the purview of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia’s research reviews. We have chosen to frame our reflections from the apex of global issues currently confronting education. This provides an opportunity to reflect on the context in which research was conducted in the 2016–2019 period, and to contextualise the research that occurred in the following four years. To accomplish this task, we apply the delightfully slippery concepts of yesterday, today and tomorrow, to position ourselves at two significant points in time—the end of 2019 and the end of 2023. From each of these temporal viewpoints (the ‘today’), we look back (‘yesterday’) and forward (‘tomorrow’). We explore the notion that mathematics education research in Australasia is not sheltered from global events and that research agendas can be either empowered or thwarted by significant, and somewhat unpredictable, shifts in environmental, social, and political landscapes.