Chapter 3: Challenges in Mathematics Teacher Education from a (Mostly) Constructivist Perspective¹

In this chapter, I am going to share some ideas that derive primarily from my research. In doing so, I hope to disrupt some thinking about mathematics teacher preparation. The cited articles go into greater depth on these ideas. A clarification before I begin: Although I was billed as speaking from a constructivist perspective, let me say I am not a constructivist. That is, I don’t belong to the “church” of constructivism. I don’t think educators can afford to belong to a theoretical church. Large, orienting theories of learning are useful tools, and in education we need to use as many of them as prove useful. We need to figure out what work each tool can do and put these tools to work for us.