Constructivist learning theories have become the dominant ideology in educational circles, in part, because there is a primacy on the agential individual with its definite identity. However, precisely because "to construct" is a "transitive" verb, it occludes the fact that in learning and development, we come to know something…

This study is part of a project concerned with the analysis of how students work with two-variable functions. This is of fundamental importance given the role of multivariable functions in mathematics and its applications. The portion of the project we report here concentrates on investigating the relationship between students' notion of subsets…

Utilizes a psychological-constructivist perspective to examine the transitions that students make from arithmetic to algebra in the context of problems that, from an expert's perspective, involve the concept of linear inequality. Reports that students who completed a transition to algebra operated at higher levels of reflective abstraction than…

Reports on important learning processes that emerged during adult mathematics classes that used a teaching approach compatible with a social constructivist theory of knowing. Concludes that affective processes precipitated students' responsiveness, modifying the immediate learning context which influenced student thinking, creating a snowball…

Considers radical constructivism in light of poststructuralism and hermeneutic phenomenology and shows how this forces a reassertion of the teacher's role in the student's constructing of mathematical knowledge. (48 references) (Author/MKR)

Describes a longitudinal constructivist teaching experiment analyzing children's ways of operating while solving fraction tasks. A case study of one third grader found that the evolution of her fraction schemes was the product of her cognitive activity and her collaborative interaction with the teacher. (42 references) (Author/MKR)