Constructing Constructivist Teaching: Reflection as research

The author set out to learn how to be a constructivist teacher in an elementary mathematics methods course, by recording in questions the aspects of teaching with which she was grappling. She then analyzed the questions in terms of content and process. The question content centered on task creation, content of her goals for teaching, assessment and ways to parse knowledge for assessment purposes, and cognition. The process contained the following patterns: (a) questions were revisited with particular foci repeatedly; (b) the questions moved through technical, interpretative, and critical rationality; (c) concern about the epistemology and beliefs pre-service teachers hold about teaching undergirded most of the interpretative and critical rationality questions; and (d) the questions became critical rational only after the author had acquired considerable knowledge of the complexity inherent in her teaching situation and only after she became aware of issues imbedded in her questions, the solutions of which would likely affect some students positively but would affect others negatively.