Excerpt: Education has failed to show steady progress because it has shifted back and forth among simplistic positions such as the associationist and rationalist philosophies. Modern cognitive psychology provides a basis for genuine progress by careful scientific analysis that identifies those aspects of theoretical positions that contribute to student learning and those that do not. Radical constructivism serves as the current exemplar of simplistic extremism, and certain of its devotees exhibit an antiscience bias that, should it prevail, would destroy any hope for progress in education.

Excerpt: The main thesis of this chapter is that the culture of teacher education must share the core characteristics of the desired mathematics classroom culture. In particular, this relationship must hold if teacher education is to exercise a reforming influence on in-service teachers and create a break in the circle of reproduction by which the weaknesses of the existing school system are perpetuated. It follows that more attention should be devoted to the relation between alternative classroom experiences and theoretical instruction, to the fundamental role of everyday language for the understanding of mathematics, the balance of self-directed work and the negotiation of meanings in seminars and tutorials, and to the development of reflection and self-monitoring.

Excerpt: Since World War II, mathematics and science education have been high on the educational reform agenda in many countries, including the United States. […] In this chapter, I wish to suggest some ways to reframe this conception of reform in science education. These ways are at one time theoretical and empirical – that is, rooted in the constructivist perspective and in The Professional Practice Community (PPC), a grassroots model for collaboration that may be a constructivist medium to foster educational reform even in the present era of national standards. This model may offer effective structures not only for “valuing questions and ideas” in relation to the usual beliefs on cognition, learning, and teaching, but also for providing a network to support risk taking and change. But before that, some comments on the current U. S. reform project.

Excerpt: My purpose in this paper is to show that the two major options on which the current debate on the interpretation of quantum mechanics relies, namely realism and empiricism (or instrumentalism), are far from being exhaustive. There is at least one more position available; a position which has been widely known in the history of philosophy during the past two centuries but which, in spite of some momentous exceptions, has only attracted little interest until recently in relation to the foundational problems of quantum mechanics. According to this third position, one may provide a theory with much stronger justifications than mere a posteriori empirical adequacy, without invoking the slightest degree of isomorphism between this theory and the elusive things out there. Such an intermediate attitude, which is metaphysically as agnostic as empiricism, but which shares with realism a commitment to considering the structure of theories as highly significant, has been named transcendentalism after Kant. Of course, I have no intention in this paper to rehearse the procedures and concepts developed by Kant himself; for these particular procedures and concepts were mostly adapted to the state of physics in his time, namely to Newtonian mechanics. I rather wish to formulate a generalized version of his method and show how this can yield a reasoning that one is entitled to call a transcendental deduction of quantum mechanics. This will be done in three steps. To begin with, I shall define carefully the word “transcendental,” and the procedure of “transcendental deduction,” in terms which will make clear how they can have a much broader field of application than Kant ever dared to imagine. Then, I shall show briefly that the main structural features of quantum mechanics can indeed be transcendentally deduced in this modern sense. Finally, I shall discuss the significance, and also the limits, of these results.

Constructivist educational principles suggest that educational environments should provide learners with personal control, authentic learning contexts, and diverse personal interactions including collaboration. How can such constructivist values be applied to mass Higher Education? Traditional methods cannot achieve it with large student numbers but computer‐based media are scaleable and may support constructivist learning. A new course for non‐science undergraduates provided an opportunity for a constructivist design using the World Wide Web, email, and video. The design of the course, its implementation and evaluation are described. Authentic assessment was critical. Web forms and e‐mail supported some necessary personal interactions, but collaborative work was problematical.

This paper summarizes recent attempts by this author to create a transdisciplinary, non-Cartesian and non-reductionistic framework for information studies in natural, social, and technological systems. To confront, in a scientific way, the problems of modern information technology where phenomenological man is dealing with socially constructed texts in algorithmically based digital bit-machines we need a theoretical framework spanning from physics over biology and technological design to phenomenological and social production of signification and meaning. I am working with such pragmatic theories as second order cybernetics (coupled with autopolesis theory), Lakoffs biologically oriented cognitive semantics, Peirce’s triadic semiotics, and Wittgenstein’s pragmatic language game theory. A coherent synthesis of these theories is what the cybersemiotic framework attempts to accomplish.

Key words: cybersemiotics, information science, second order cybernetics, autopoiesis, triadic sign