Democracy and School Math: Teacher Belief-Practice Tensions and the Problem of Empirical Research on Educational Aims

This article describes an empirical project that studied fourth-through-eighth-grade math teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning and about the role of teaching and learning in broader society. Specifically, it examined relationships between teachers’ reported beliefs and their use of transmittal, constructivist, and democratic classroom practices. The article concludes with consideration about the difficulties inherent in attempting to use empirical research to study our broad educational aims, particularly our democratic ones