ABSTRACT
In their 1986 chapter for the Third Handbook of Research on Teaching, Romberg and Carpenter summarized the status of research on children’s learning in mathematics, the nature of research on the teaching of mathematics, and the relation between the two (Romberg & Carpenter, 1986). They noted that although the emphasis in research on learning had changed dramatically in the previous 15 years, reflecting the turn in the field of psychology toward cognitive science, work on the instructional implications of these theories of learning was at a nascent stage, and much of the research directly addressing questions of teaching remained untouched by the revolution in cognitive science. Romberg and Carpenter argued that theories of instruction needed to be consistent with what we know about how children learn and think.
