A first attempt to identify and classify empirical studies on history in mathematics education¹

The field of history in mathematics education is beginning to pay more attention to empirical studies than has been the case earlier. Through a general survey of relevant literature this paper identifies the shifts in focus of this field as having gone from more advocating studies over describing studies to actual research studies, lately with an increase in the empirical research studies. Unlike more traditional surveys, the idea of this one is not to discuss the identified empirical studies in detail, nor to provide long arguments for classifying studies in one way or another. The idea is to provide a list of the empirical studies which has been identified in the survey, a comprehensive but of course not an exhausting list, and then a rough participation of these studies according to an interpretation of what appears to be their overall objective. The motives behind this approach is first and foremost to obtain an idea of where the emphasis of the empirical studies is located, both presently and in the past, and thereby also point out future domains and research questions. Yet a motive is to provide researchers in the field, newcomers as well as more established ones, with a reference list of studies that they may resort to upon engaging in similar and related empirical studies themselves. In this sense, I believe that such a list can provide both background and inspiration for future studies.