Advances in Task Design in Mathematics Education
“Tasks and task design are central to the teaching and learning of mathematics. Task design has received considerable attention in the mathematics education research community, including topic study groups, themes to guide the study of task design, and calls for needed research directions. Employing a “tensions of intentions” perspective on task design, this systematic literature review examines recent advances, presenting results of analysis of 101 refereed journal articles published since 2020. Using classical content analysis, characteristics of the corpus of articles are presented along eight categories: journal publications and years, geographical distribution, content domains, task intended audiences, sample size and methods, theoretical and conceptual perspectives, task sources and design process, and mention of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Using themeing analysis, three themes emerged: involving teachers as task (re)designers, designing for assessment and/or significance testing, and designing to foreground linguistic, critical, and cultural perspectives. Interpretation across themes resulted in a “socio-didactical triangular dipyramid” for task design, expanding Rezat and Straßer’s socio-didactical tetrahedron. Implications for future research on task design, as well as limitations of the current study, are discussed.”