Despite its advanced age of about 375 years, the mind--body (psychophysical) problem is alive and well, in part because it is anchored so well institutionally in schools and in research (scientific vs. interpretive psychology). This continued presence is astonishing in the light of the fact that the seed for its solution, sown in Spinoza's…

Standard approaches to thinking in the mathematics curriculum depict it as the result of some stable constructions in the mind of the person, constructions that are the results of individual efforts in the mind of subjects or of collective efforts that are then appropriated by and into the mind of individuals. Such work does not appreciate what…

Educators generally are concerned with testing what learners know by means of written tests, as if knowledge was some intrapsychological thing or state that could be translated and externalized into some interpsychologically available inscription that is a more-or-less accurate approximation of what the person knows. In such endeavors, language is…

Data from a study of learning conducted with 26 seventh and eighth graders are used to show the highly heterogeneous and contingent nature of students' responses to lever problems. A framework is proposed to explain variations in cognitive performance across situations and to critique some of the assumptions underlying assessments. (SLD)