This essay addresses the value of leveraging the unique learning, thinking, and knowledge students develop in home-community spaces for school curriculum. The author explores "everyday resistance" to highlight a particular set of enacted political actions and practices in which students, families, and communities participate to negotiate the…

European programs of design research have developed distinctive types of apparatus to structure and support the process of didactical design. This article illustrates how intermediate frameworks and design tools serve to mediate the contribution of grand theories to the design process, by coordinating and contextualizing theoretical insights on…

This article is intended to spark a discussion between two research communities--scholars who study learning and scholars who study educational organizations. A secondary purpose is to encourage researchers to look beyond schools to examine learning in other types of educational organizations. The authors outline a framework to guide research on…

This response to Slavin's article (2008) explores the issues of transparency, representation, and warranting of claims in Slavin's descriptions of the work of others and his suggestions for program evaluation syntheses. Through contrastive analyses between Slavin's representations of the program evaluation synthesis efforts of five organizations…

Although intellectual conflict may be an important instructional tool (because of its potential constructive outcomes), conflict is rarely structured in instructional situations (because of its potential destructive outcomes). Many educators may be apprehensive about instigating intellectual conflict among students because of the lack of…

Clarifies the author's position on constructivism and whether nature determines what is produced as knowledge in human development. The author states his form of constructivism as a theory of rational knowing, not a metaphysics of being, for whatever things we know, we know only insofar as having constructed them as viable entities in our…

Argues against Glasersfeld's (1996) position that individual experience, not metaphysics, dictates that knowing is itself a metaphysical position. It further disputes Glasersfeld's assertion that people are necessarily constructed differently in our minds than objects, but agrees with Glasersfeld that proceeding with the business of education does…

Discusses Paul Cobb's distinction in learning research between psychological constructivism, the emergent perspective, and sociocultural theory, and examines his argument that it is reasonable to talk about knowing from each of these viewpoints. The author offers a refinement of Cobb's pragmatic approach in accounting for learning. (GR)

Examines the concept of learning from both constructivist and sociocultural perspectives and introduces a third perspective based on K. R. Popper's philosophy of science. It is argued that constructivism cannot adequately account for the immaterial objects that Popper located in his World 3--abstract mathematical and scientific objects. (GLR)

Responds to A. L. Brown's 1994 assertion that behaviorism and most learning and developmental research impede theoretical progress and negatively affect educational practice. The author first discusses how Brown inappropriately uses the most outlandish research and practice in the behaviorist tradition as an excuse to reject behaviorism outright,…

Argues the good and the bad aspects of constructivism as revealed through the literature, and describes the framework of the three different dimensions constructivist writers fall into. The author also discusses the degree to which each dimension harbors various sociopolitical versus educational concerns. (GR)

Comments on Erick Smith's proposed knowing/knowledge distinction, and clarifies a possible ambiguity in the present author's use of the term "constructivism." The article distinguishes between Piagetian-based psychological constructivism as outlined by Smith and the author's version of constructivism. (GR)

Comments on Erick Smith's article that states the authors do not use a consistent meaning for the term "knowledge" when discussing learning theory. The authors use the Vygotskian account of the movement from the interpsychological to the intrapsychological plane through the process of internalization and reinvention to explain their…

Presents a historical framework of classroom assessment, highlighting the key tenets of social efficiency curricula, behaviorist learning theories, and scientific measurement. Offers a contrasting social-constructivist conceptual framework that blends key ideas from cognitive, constructivist, and sociocultural theories. Elaborates on ways that…

Argues that mathematical learning should be viewed as a process of active individual construction and a process of enculturation into the mathematical practices of wider society. It further argues that the sociocultural perspective theorizes the conditions for the possibility of learning, whereas constructivist perspectives focus on what students…