The field of mathematics education research has been historically concerned with improving the teaching and learning of mathematics in schools. The extent to which such a goal has been achieved, however, is not easy to assess. The difficulty arises as a result of an apparent gulf between research and practice. The theorizations and transformative practices that researchers propose can stumble as they encounter conservative school structures. This paper argues that the “lack of change” in mathematics education reforms is not merely a problem of “implementation”. Rather, the failure is embedded in the very way in which research is conceptualised. We report on a quantitative study that assesses the role of research and its apparent inability to inform change in schools. The dataset comprises the articles that were published in two esteemed journals during the year of 2013. Analysis of this data produced a bibliometric analysis of the variables and keywords that defined the studies. The contemporary notion of ideology is used as a tool in interpreting this factual assessment. This tool allowed a mapping of the ideological assumptions at work in researcher conceptions regarding the implications of their studies and the subjectivities that are implicated.