Disciplined Inquiry In Chaotic Contexts

This is a book about science classrooms, but I’m intrigued: what’s so chaotic about math classrooms? When I ask mathematics teachers in my graduate classes for a key metaphor that they use to make sense of their teaching experiences and curricula, a recurring theme is chaos theory. Over the six years I’ve been teaching a graduate curriculum course for math and science teachers, at least one mathematics educator has come up with this image each year. This is not to say that these teachers believe they preside over chaotic, uncontrolled classrooms, or that their understanding of the curricula they work within and generate with their students is unclear.