This book presents ideas developed by Paul Cobb and his colleagues that have significantly influenced the field of mathematics education over the past three decades. In this volume, they are brought together for readers to present a clear view of how the field has changed during that time. During his career Cobb moved from looking at a single child's mathematical reasoning, to a class learning a particular mathematical topic, to a group of school teachers, and to a school district with all its teachers, teachers' teachers and principals. It was his wish to make a real difference and his constantly revised understanding of what it takes to do so that dictated this gradual broadening of the unit of analysis. This development is presented in this book with the help of chronologically organized previously published papers, each of which represents a distinct stage in this intellectual journey and is preceded by a new commentary that sheds additional light on the processes of reconceptualization and thus helps the reader to understand the reasons, mechanisms, and outcomes of researchers’ constant pursuit of new insights. This book thus demonstrates how research develops and evolves when theory and practice are taken as mutually informing aspects of the researcher’s work. In this sense, the volume is relevant to audiences primarily interested in practical aspects of mathematics education as well as to those whose primary interests lie in theoretical developments.
This book contributes to the current debate about how to think and talk about human thinking so as to resolve or bypass such time-honored quandaries as the controversy of nature vs. nurture, the body and mind problem, the question of learning transfer, and the conundrum of human consciousness. The author responds to the challenge by introducing her own "commognitive" conceptualization of human thinking. She argues for this special approach with the help of examples of mathematical thinking. Except for its contribution to theorizing on human development, the book is relevant to researchers looking for methodological innovations, and to mathematics educators seeking pedagogical insights and improvements.
El enfoque comunicacional presentado en este libro es producto de veinte años de búsqueda de la operacionalidad, combinada con intentos de hallar una ruta segura entre dos necesidades conflictivas, la necesidad de una comprensión útil, por una parte, y la necesidad de comunicabilidad y acumulabilidad, por la otra. Este marco especial, hecho a la medida de las necesidades de investigación sobre el pensamiento matemático y el aprendizaje, se ofrece en este libro como una evidencia de que comprometerse con la segunda necesidad no es el precio necesario para satisfacer la primera. Dicho esto, la tarea de construir el marco no está cerca de completarse. Por tanto, se recomienda ver este volumen como un resumen provisional de los esfuerzos continuados de la autora y de sus colegas.
In this special issue contributors observed a class of seventh graders making their first steps in analyzing statistical data. From a number of different perspectives, they applied a different conceptual lens to answer a set of well-defined questions about the process of learning. The approaches offered in the six contributions differ in their foci, questions asked, organizing principles, and methods of analysis. As such, this issue presents and contrasts the differing perspectives and methodologies of each contributing author, while showing that they are complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
Appended to this issue is a CD-ROM disk on which the reader will find hypertext versions of all the articles together with video clips presenting the classroom episodes. The episodes are subtitled and the hypertext enables smooth transitions from the transcript lines quoted in the articles to the corresponding segments of video clips.