RUME 27
2025
Alexandria, Virginia
Supporting Learning Through Interpreting Others’ Solutions From a Radical Constructivist Perspective: A Theoretical Report
Page: 898
Although much research has made the case for the value of students’ making sense of others’ solutions, explanatory mechanisms for how such learning occurs are lacking. In this theoretical report, we consider how students’ making sense of others’ mathematical solutions may support learning from a radical constructivist perspective. We elaborate on radical constructivist constructs–social goals, cognitive perturbations, and reflective abstraction–and use these constructs to model how engagement with others’ mathematical solutions may engender learning. We illustrate our model with a task we designed to promote students’ meanings for spatial coordinate systems. We conclude with implications for research and teaching.