Teachers' Pedagogical Sensemaking of Mathematics Education Research through Replication: a Way of Increasing Implementability of Research Findings

Arguably, all educational research is conducted with the goal of improving teaching and learning. However, research may not explicitly suggest implications for practice. Furthermore, teachers may not be convinced by findings based on academic theories and methods of analysis that are foreign to them. This suggests that findings of such research may have a low level of implementability. We posit that replication of research by teachers can lead them to findings that are more implementable for them. In this article we elaborate the notion of implementability of educational research findings, make a theoretical case for teachers' qualitative replication of basic research, and offer the notion of pedagogical sensemaking as the activity by which research findings may become implementable for teachers. We investigate this practice based on empirical data gathered in a graduate course for practicing teachers, who were required to replicate a well-known piece of basic research in mathematics education.