Curriculum variables,theory and goals: A comment on Begle's Critical Variables in Mathematics Education

The following text was prepared for the Begle Memorial Series on Research in Mathematics Education of the IV ICME Congress at Berkeley in August 1980. Several sessions of this series were devoted to Begle's¹ last book Critical Variables in Mathematics Education, and I was asked to discuss one of its chapters. However, in my view, the more interesting questions Begle's survey raises concern basic problems related to the study as a whole, though these may be identified in each of its parts. Therefore, I have divided my text into two parts: the first sticks more closely to the chapter on curriculum variables which I was to review, and the second is devoted to a more general view on the problems. This procedure may be justified beyond the original purpose: reconstructing one single part of the book may supply a concrete basis for the reflections subsequently explicated and may help in visualizing them.