THE POSSIBILITY OF APERSPECTIVAL RESEARCH ON MATHEMATICS LEARNING

The difficulty in reconciling the differing commitments - ontological, epistemological and methodological - of the various perspectives on research on mathematics learning is well established. As an example of this difficulty, there will be some discussion of cognitivist (e.g. Anderson, Reder & Simon, 1996, 1997) versus socioculturalist (e.g. Greeno, 1997) perspectives on mathematics learning. The claim will be made that problems of language, pace Wittgenstein (1953) and Derrida (1997), are at the heart of the apparent irreconcilability of these two and other perspectives, and that this apparent irreconcilability can be at least partly remedied through a post-structuralist, semiotic, approach. Some practical examples of the problem and some advantages of this approach are described and discussed.