Critiques: Seeking Meaning in Mathematics Instruction: A Response to Gagné

Mathematics educators have for some time been interested in psychological bases for the teaching of mathematics in the schools (Buswell, 1951). They have naturally turned to cognitive theorists in their quest to understand such terms as knowledge, meaning, concepts, mental operations, problem solving, and insight . Gagné's (1983) paper is bur one example of this historical collaboration. His purpose is to “relate what is known about learning, … from the kind of theory [he has] described, to the problem of improving mathematics learning” (p. 10).