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A Third Grade Teacher in a Technocratic School System Asks a Dangerous Question: What is Learning?

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Abstract

This paper, written by a practicing school teacher, offers a background and rationale to explain how his educational constructs of learning have been challenged, influenced, and changed by exposure to constructivist educational philosophy, to frame the tensions he encounters in his practice as a result of questioning educational beliefs in a technocratic school system, and finally, to discuss the resulting consequences this process has for his teaching. In addition, the author hopes to encourage dialogue between practitioners and scholars about the ways recent constructivist conceptions of education, teaching, and learning, although theoretically appealing, can be difficult to place into practice in a technocratic school system.

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Dewitt, P. A Third Grade Teacher in a Technocratic School System Asks a Dangerous Question: What is Learning?. Interchange 30, 399–414 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007646828111

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