An Episodic History of Mathematics

In fact, as in many recent publications in mathematics educa- tion, much of what is described . . . reflects two movements, “sit- uated learning” and “constructivism”, which have been gaining influence on thinking about education and educational research. In our view, some of the central educational recommendations of these movements have questionable psychological foundations. We wish to compare these recommendations with current empir- ical knowledge about effective and ineffective ways to facilitate learning in mathematics and to reach some conclusions about what are the effective ways. A number of the claims that have been advanced as insights from cognitive psychology are at best highly controversial and at worst directly contradict...