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This book presents a research focus on diversity and inclusivity in mathematics education. The challenge of diversity, largely in terms of student profiles or contextual features, is endemic in mathematics education, and is often argued to require differentiation as a response. Typically different curricula, text materials, task structures or pedagogies are favoured responses, but huge differences in achievement still result. If we in mathematics education seek to challenge that status quo, more research must be focussed not just on diversity but also on the inclusivity, of practices in mathematics education. The book is written by a group of experienced collaborating researchers who share this focus. It is written for researchers, research students, teachers and in-service professionals, who recognise both the challenges but also the opportunities of creating and evaluating new inclusive approaches to curriculum and pedagogy – ones that take for granted the positive values of diversity. Several chapters report new research in this direction. The authors are part of, or have visited with, the mathematics education staff of the Faculty of Education at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia. The chapters all focus on the ideas of development in both research and practice, recognising that the current need is for new inclusive approaches. The studies presented are set in different contexts, including Australia, China, the United States, and Singapore.

ALAN J. BISHOP Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia RATIONALE Mathematics Education is becoming a well-documented field with many books, journals and international conferences focusing on a variety of aspects relating to theory, research and practice. That documentation also reflects the fact that the field has expanded enormously in the last twenty years. At the 8th International Congress on Mathematics Education (ICME) in Seville, Spain, for example, there were 26 specialist Working Groups and 26 special­ ist Topic Groups, as well as a host of other group activities. In 1950 the'Commission Internationale pour I'Etude et l'Amelioration de l'Enseignement des Mathematiques'(CIEAEM) was formed and twenty years ago another active group, the'International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education'(PME), began at the third ICME at Karlsruhe in 1976. Since then several other specialist groups have been formed, and are also active through regular conferences and publications, as documented in Edward Jacobsen's Chapter 34 in this volume.

ALAN 1. BISHOP The first International Handbook on Mathematics Education was published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1996. However, most of the writing for that handbook was done in 1995 and generally reflected the main research and development foci prior to 1994. There were four sections, 36 chapters, and some 150 people contributed to the final volume either as author, reviewer, editor, or critical friend. The task was a monumental one, attempting to cover the major research and practice developments in the international field of mathematics education as it appeared to the contributors in 1995. Inevitably there were certain omissions, some developments were only starting to emerge, and some literatures were only sketchy and speculative. However that Handbook has had to be reprinted three times, so it clearly fulfilled a need and I personally hope that it lived up to what I wrote in its Introduction: The Handbook thus attempts not merely to present a description of the international'state-of-the-field', but also to offer synthetic and reflective overviews on the different directions being taken by the field, on the gaps existing in our present knowledge, on the current problems being faced, and on the future possibilities for development. (Bishop et aI., 1996) Since that time there has been even more activity in our field, and now seems a good time to take stock again, to reflect on what has happened since 1995, and to create a second Handbook with the same overall goals.