Historical Review of the Theses Approved in the Venezuelan Master’s Degree Programmes in Mathematics Education (1974-2016)

Background : 1974 is the landmark of the launching of postgraduate studies in Venezuela and other Latin American countries. Objective : Answer the following question: (a) How can we detail the foundation of the PVMEMs and how have they evolved until now? Design : We carried out a multiple case study of a particular nature, developing it into three phases: (a) Pre-Active, considering previous studies related to the subject; (b) Interactive, corresponding to the fieldwork: identification of two active PVMEMs and semi-structured interviews with the people linked to the programmes above, who can provide information of interest to the study; this phase was closed with the organisation of the textual and oral corpora, fundamental for the study; and (c) Post-Active, when we proceed to: analyse and interpret the collected, reduced and organised information; organise the results obtained and provide the answers to the guiding questions of the research. Data collection and analysis : We saw that seven universities in Venezuela hold master’s degree programmes in mathematics education. During the study period,