Existing literature reviews of calculus learning made an important contribution to our understanding of the development of mathematics education research in this area, particularly their documentation of how research transitioned from studying students’ misconceptions to investigating students’ understanding and ways of thinking per se. This paper has three main goals relative to this contribution. The first goal is to offer a conceptual analysis of how students’ difficulties surveyed in three major literature review publications originate in the mathematical meanings and ways of thinking students develop in elementary, middle and early high school. The second goal is to highlight a contribution to an important aspect that the articles in this issue make but was overshadowed by other aspects addressed in existing literature reviews: the nature of the mathematics students experience under the name “calculus” in various nations or regions around the world, and the relation of this mathematics to ways ideas foundational to it are developed over the grades. The third goal is to outline research questions entailed from these articles for future research regarding each of them.

现有的微积分学习文献综述对我们对该领域数学教育研究的理解做出了重要贡献，特别是他们关于研究如何从研究学生的误解转变为研究学生的理解和思维方式本身的文献。相对于此贡献，本文具有三个主要目标。第一个目标是对三个主要文献综述出版物中所调查的学生困难如何从数学意义以及学生在小学，初中和高中发展的思维方式的起源进行概念分析。第二个目标是强调对本期文章所做出的重要方面的贡献，但被现有文献综述中提到的其他方面所掩盖：数学学生在世界上各个国家或地区以“微积分”的名义经历的性质，以及该数学与基于年级的基础思想发展方式的关系。第三个目标是概述这些文章中涉及的研究问题，以供以后对它们进行研究。