3403

Iskra Nunez

philosophy of mathematics education

2016

31

Critical Realism , Evolution, Integral Theory , Mathematics Education Research , Mechanism , Philosophical Methods, Plurality , Theoretical Incompleteness

The current study considers four centuries of philosophical thought in influencing the expansion of theoretical perspectives brought to bear on mathematics learning and teaching. Drawing upon the AQAL model of integral theory as a heuristic, it inquires into the necessity to use multiple theories in mathematics education research (thereafter MER) through four moments in history, from the late seventeenth-century hermeneutics, to eighteenth-century transcendental idealism, to nineteenth-century pragmatic theory, to the twenty-century postmodernist theory. Each moment in the analysis of theoretical perspectives in use within MER proceeds sequentially by identifying weaknesses (or blind spots) in its philosophical precursor. This research concludes with a discussion of some of the possible contributions of this approach for twenty-first century MER.