Radical constructivists advocate discovery-based pedagogical regimes that enable students to incrementally and continuously adapt their cognitive structures to the instrumented cultural environment. Some sociocultural theorists, however, maintain that learning implies discontinuity in conceptual development, because novices must appropriate expert…

The purpose of this thesis is to improve our understanding of sensemaking process as a basis for building better systems to assist sensemaking. Sensemaking is the task of creating an understanding of a problem or task so that further actions may be taken in an informed manner. Sensemaking is a pre-requisite for many other tasks such as decision…

This paper details how memory protocols obtained in individual interviews may be translated to scores on several dimensions suggested by White. White's nine dimensions are: (1) extent, (2) precision, (3) internal consistency, (4) accord with reality, (5) variety of types of element, (6) variety of topics, (7) shape, (8) ratio of internal to…

Documents the patterns of coherence and persistence in energy conceptions. Describes the derivation of the Interview Vee technique and the procedure for putting an interview on the Vee. Discusses the production of Vee maps to help understand childrens' learning of concepts. (CW)

Reviews recent research in the area of mathematical understanding and compares and contrasts it with a model formulated for the growth of understanding. Uses the analysis of a transcript from an interview with an eight-year-old boy to illustrate the power of the model to describe and map the growth of his mathematical understanding. (18…