Where form and substance meet: using the narrative approach of re-storying to generate research findings and community rapprochement in (university) mathematics education.

Storytelling is an engaging way through which lived experience can be shared and reflected upon, and a tool through which difference, diversity-and even conflict-can be acknowledged and elaborated upon. Narrative approaches to research bring the richness and vibrancy of storytelling into how data is collected and interpretations of it shared. In this paper, I demonstrate the potency of the narrative approach of re-storying for a certain type of university mathematics education research ( non-deficit, non-prescriptive, context-specific, example-centred and mathematically focused) conducted at the interface of two communities: mathematics education and mathematics. I do so through reference to Amongst Mathematicians (Nardi, ), a study carried out in collaboration with 20 university mathematicians from six UK mathematics departments. The study deployed re-storying to present data and analyses in the form of a dialogue between two fictional, yet entirely data-grounded, characters-M, mathematician, and RME, researcher in mathematics education. In the dialogues, the typically conflicting epistemologies-and mutual perceptions of such epistemologies-of the two communities come to the fore as do the feasibility-of, benefits-from, obstacles-in and conditions-for collaboration between these communities. First, I outline the use of narrative approaches in mathematics education research. Then, I introduce the study and its use of re-storying, illustrating this with an example: the construction of a dialogue from interview data in which the participating mathematicians discuss the potentialities and pitfalls of visualisation in university mathematics teaching. I conclude by outlining re-storying as a vehicle for community rapprochement achieved through generating and sharing research findings-the substance of research-in forms that reflect the fundamental principles and aims that underpin this research. My conclusions resonate with sociocultural constructs that view mathematics teacher education as contemporary praxis and the aforementioned inter-community discussion as taking place within a third space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]