This theoretical, methodological, and empirical networking study investigated the potential of inferentialism to contribute to the study of meaning and collective argumentation in mathematics. I carefully attended to my worldview and explicated my philosophical process for identifying inferentialism as my theory of choice. I then drew on Prediger et al.'s (2008b) networking strategies to theoretically, methodologically, and empirically compare and contrast inferentialism with radical constructivism and the sociocultural perspective. Inferentialism and radical constructivism were compared with respect to the meaning of mathematical concepts; inferentialism and the documenting collective activity (DCA) methodology (Rasmussen & Stephan, 2008), which is based on sociocultural theories, were compared with respect to collective argumentation. The extant data I used to empirically network the theories were from two related sources. The first source was video data from the first of three content courses, each paired with a pedagogy course, for prospective secondary mathematics teachers (PSTs) prior to student teaching. Amidst the content course, clinical interviews were performed with nine of the PSTs as part of an overarching teaching experiment (Steffe & Thompson, 2000b). The PSTs were interviewed twice--near the beginning of the semester and near the end of the semester. These clinical interviews were my second source of extant data. As a result of my study, I clarified the identity of inferentialism, explicated an inferentialist analytic methodology, and furthered inferentialist research on collective argumentation and students' mastery of multiple mathematical concepts. I also identified the affordances and limitations of inferentialism in comparison to the other theories. Radical constructivism has a more established tradition of research to draw on, but inferentialism enabled me to analyze the social and contextual factors at play in students' mathematical reasoning. Furthermore, my analysis underlined the power of DCA's ability to move across grain sizes to make general claims about the collective learning of a classroom. Inferentialism, however, allowed me to foreground individuals' learning within collective argumentation and simultaneously attend to how ideas received normative status in the classroom. Implications for future inferentialist research in mathematics education are discussed. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]