Basic Problems in Mathematics Education Research1, 2.ppt

Basic Problems in Mathematics Education Research1, 2 Leslie P. Steffe University of Georgia Basic Principles of Radical Constructivism 1. A. Knowledge is not passively received either through the senses or by way of communication; B. Knowledge is actively built up by the cognizing individual. 2. A. Knowledge is adaptive, in the biological sense of the term, tending toward fit or viability; B. Cognition serves in the individual’s organization of the experiential world, not the discovery of an objective, ontological reality (Glasersfeld, 1995) A Progressive Research Program. A research program is progressive if progressive problem shifts occur. (Lakatos, 1970). First Problem How can researchers in mathematics education use mathematics teaching as a method of scientific investigation? Main Goals of Using Teaching as a Method of Scientific Investigation. 1. To build living, experiential models of students’ mathematics. 2. To experience constraints when teaching students. The constructivist is fully aware of the fact that an organism’s conceptual constructions are not fancy-free. On the contrary, the process of constructing is constantly curbed and held in check by the constraints it runs into. (Glasersfeld, 1990, p. 33) Basis For Using Teaching as a Method of Scientific Investigation The view of students as self-organizing and interacting systems (the mind organizes the world by organizing itself). Cognitive processes seem, then, to be at one and the same time the outcome of organic auto-regulation and the most highly differentiated organs of this regulation at the core of interactions with the environment” (Piattelli-Palmarini,1980). A Compatibility with Second-Order Cybernetics. Approaches to inquiry have centered on the idea of worlds being constructed by inquirers who are simultaneously participants in those same worlds (Steier, 1995). A science of observed systems cannot be divorced from a science of observing systems because it is w