for the learning of mathematics

an international journal of mathematics education

Suggestions to writers

The journal aims to stimulate reflection on all levels of mathematics education, and promote study of its practices and its theories: to generate productive discussion; to encourage enquiry and research; to promote criticism and evaluation of ideas and procedures current in the field. It is intended for the mathematics educator who is aware that the learning and teaching of mathematics are complex enterprises about which much remains to be revealed and understood.

'Mathematics education' should be interpreted to mean the whole field of human ideas and activities that affect, or could affect, the learning of mathematics. As mathematics education draws upon a number of more established cognate disciplines, articles about psychology, mathematics, sociology, linguistics, philosophy, etc. are welcomed provided their content bears on the learning of mathematics. This might be achieved directly, or indirectly through offering a significant perspective to mathematics educators. The journal has space for articles which attempt to bring together ideas from several sources and show their relation to the theories or practices of mathematics education. It is a place where ideas may be tried out and presented for discussion.

Prospective authors are encouraged to read articles in the journal to get a sense of the journal's style and focus. The article 'Loved articles' [link ] in issue 23(3) contains short communications from members of the Advisory Board about the kinds of articles they would like to see in FLM. Reading the articles pointed to by them may be helpful. Issue 34(1) [link] contains essays reflecting on the nature of the journal on the occasion of its 100th issue. The 2019 open access Compendium for early career researchers in mathematics education, [link] published by Springer, contains a chapter 'For the Learning of Mathematics: an introduction to the journal and the writing within it' with useful advice for prospective contributors. The Compendium also contains articles about contributing to other journals.

Writing should be in the form of an essay or a narrative. Writing about informal research, especially from the classroom, is as welcome as theoretical articles and academic research. Standard research reports, book reviews, and outlines of teaching ideas should normally be submitted elsewhere. Authors are encouraged to consider submitting short communications, that, in the words of our founding editor David Wheeler, contain 'insights worth telling' that don't 'trail bibliographies after them'.

Contributions may be submitted in English or French. Authors are free to follow the conventions of US, UK, Canadian, French or other dialects of these languages. Authors are encouraged to provide versions of their article in both of FLM's languages of publication. If such an article is accepted, one version will appear in the printed issue and the other will appear, open access, on the journal's website.

FLM endorses the 'Joint statement to reduce reviewer bias' [link]. The journal particularly invites contributions from scholars who belong to cultural and linguistic communities that are minoritised in local or global contexts. Accepted articles are carefully edited and proof-read; authors should ensure their text is understandable, but submissions do not have to be grammatically perfect. The Editors and members of the Advisory Board are prepared to give an opinion about the suitability of an article for publication on the evidence of a draft version, in any of the following languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Turkish, German, Italian, Dutch, Hebrew, Polish, and Scandinavian languages. We hope to be able to accommodate other languages in the future.

Articles should generally have a maximum of 5000 words. Short communications, such as comments on already published articles, speculations, or other observations, should generally contain fewer than 2000 words. These word limits include references. Initial submissions do not require an abstract, but accepted full length articles will require an abstract to be included on our website.

The decision to have an anonymous review or an open review rests with the authors. Authors who wish an anonymous review should remove identifying information from their manuscript.

Every article is thoroughly reviewed by experts in the field prior to acceptance. We have a two stage review process. Submissions are initially read by the editors and a member of our Advisory Board. This normally takes about six weeks, after which the article may be rejected, sent back for revisions, or forwarded to the second stage, external review. The external review process takes at least eight weeks, and sometimes longer. Normally articles go through several rounds of reviews and revision; the total time varies. The timeline for short communications is usually shorter, especially for comments on recently published articles. Authors are encouraged to contact the editor at editor@flm-journal.org if the reviewing process is taking an unusually long time, or if the reviews seem to be biased or unfair.

Writers should send an electronic version of their contribution, ideally in pdf format, directly to editor@flm-journal.org. There are no formatting requirements for initial submissions. If the article is accepted, we accept editable files in many different formats, including LaTeX, docx and odt.