Inspecting the foundations of claims about cognitive demand and student learning: A citation analysis of Stein and Lane (1996)

•Cognitively demanding tasks are commonly presumed to be positively related to students' mathematical learning.•In mathematics education literature, Stein and Lane (1996) is often cited in support of the link between tasks and learning.•We analyzed the citations of Stein and Lane (1996) and found that many went beyond what was warranted by the study design.•We summarized the small number of additional studies that were typically cited along with Stein and Lane (1996).•We discuss beliefs and evidence as well as the role of replication studies for claims about mathematical tasks and learning.

Educational research communities bear responsibility for establishing a substantial body of evidence to support claims that drive the field. For example, one commonly accepted claim is that there is a relationship between the cognitive demand of mathematical task enactments and students' learning. One study that is often cited in association with this claim is Stein and Lane (1996), and in 44% of those citations, Stein and Lane (1996) is the sole reference. Citation analysis reveals that many of these claims go beyond the warrants provided by the Stein and Lane study, either by granting more confidence in the relationship than the study design allows or by phrasing the claim as a causal relationship between cognitive demand and student learning. A few other studies are occasionally cited in conjunction with Stein and Lane (1996) and are summarized in this article, but there remains a need for replication studies to provide better empirical support for claims about cognitive demand and student learning and to refine our shared understanding.