ABSTRACT
In a recent paper on the role of computers in education, Gavriel Salamon states that there has been ‘a shift of attention from Piaget to Vygotsky’ (Salamon, 1992, p. 25). Although Salamon made this remark in connection with the importance of understanding the social changes in the classroom that accompany the introduc-tion of computers, he also captured the essence of an important debate which is beginning to emerge in education. In this debate a challenge is being issued to what might be called conventional constructivist views based on the work of Piaget. This Piagetian view is often characterized as seeing constructive activity as an individual process isolated from both cultural artifacts and more knowledgeable others ((Scott, Cole and Engel, 1992, p. 191). The emerging challenge takes two forms. One places primary emphasis on the social and linguistic basis of knowledge (Ernest, 1991; Gergen, 1992; Restivo, 1993), while the second emphasizes the importance of social and cultural factors in individual learning (Cole, 1985; van Oers, 1992; Wertsch, 1979). Often these two forms are lumped together under the general rubric ‘social constructivism’, a genre of constructivism which emphasizes social/cultural factors and which is currently dominated by those working in the legacy of Vygotsky. Thus the dispute is often seen as one between the traditional (or Piagetian) constructivists and the social (or Vygotskian) constructivists. Although in this chapter, I will
argue for making a distinction between two constructivist approaches, I will argue first that the Piagetian Vygotskian criteria may not be the most useful and second that the two approaches to constructivism I suggest are better viewed as complementary than as competitive. Ultimately, however, I argue that the essence of what we call human mathematical activity requires what I call an individual constructivist perspective.
