Chapter 5: Analyzing the Official and Intended Curricula: Methods and Techniques to Study Mathematics Standards and Textbooks

In this chapter, we reflect on our collective experiences researching mathematics standards and textbooks to provide advice stemming from the lessons we learned. We begin with lessons learned from researching mathematics standards, including how methods and data analysis techniques can be selected to facilitate analyses of standards. These comparative methodologies and data analysis techniques provide a number of approaches curriculum researchers can use depending upon their desired focus. We then detail lessons from our study of mathematics textbooks through the lens of standards documents, including how textbooks as well as specific content areas can be selected, and how data from the standards and textbooks were analyzed. Our goal is to provide insight to future generations of curriculum researchers, who will continue to advance research in these important areas.