ABSTRACT
To understand the dynamics of teachers reforming their mathematical and instructional practices is widely recognized as a fundamental problem in mathematics education. Many efforts to bring about reforms are grounded in some form of constructivism. A number of studies have examined ways that teachers reconceptualize their role in a constuctivist perspective (Cobb et al., 1990; Maher and Alston, 1990; Simon and Schifter, 1991; Wood et al., 1995), while others have attempted to identify the attributes that are given to ‘constructivist teaching’ (Confrey, 1990; Simon, 1995a, 1995b; Steffe and D’Ambrosio, 1995, 1996; Glasersfeld, 1995). Some of those studies have explored teachers’ development in a classroom learning environment (Cobb et al., 1990), while others have attempted to examine the effect of teacher education programs on this development (Maher and Alston, 1990; Simon and Schifter, 1991). However, there have been no studies of how budding researchers become constructivists and of the dilemmas they face while doing so.
