Publication 2098

In an epistemology where mathematics teaching is viewed as goal-directed interactive communication in a consensual domain of experience, mathematics learning is viewed as reflective abstraction in the context of scheme theory. In this view, mathematical knowledge is understood as coordinated schemes of action and operation. Consequently, research methodology has to be designed as a flexible, investigative tool. The constructivist teaching experiment is a technique that was designed to investigate children’s mathematical knowledge and how it might be learned in the context of mathematics teaching (Cobb & Steffe, 1983; Hunting, 1983; Steffe, 1984). In a teaching experiment, the role of the researcher changes from an observer who intends to establish objective scientific facts to an actor who intends to construct models that are relative to his or her own actions.