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Mathematics educators have been publishing their work in international research journals for nearly 5 decades. How has the field developed over this period? The authors analyzed the full text of all articles published in Educational Studies in Mathematics and the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education since their foundation. They quantitatively assess the extent of the “social turn,” observe that the field is currently experiencing a period of theoretical diversity, and identify and discuss the “experimental cliff,” a period during which experimental investigations migrated away from mathematics education journals.

This article was written for a Liberty Fund conference on “Liberty in Relation to Law and Macroeconomics.” The paper works with recognition that the models we use are not neutral devices to see more clearly into reality because they also shade that reality in different ways. For instance, a model grounded on systemic equilibrium and aggregation will almost necessarily assign turbulence to market interaction and thereby place the calming of turbulence in the province of political action simply because there is no coherent alternative. By contrast, a model where turbulence is baked into the cake of human action will recognize that human action both creates and calms turbulence, and continually, and will also recognize that the continual shifting among coalitions that is a feature of democratic politics is even more likely to generate turbulence than to calm it, and with turbulence and calmness both being ordinary features of human society.