Discourse toward balanced rationality in the high school mathematics classroom: Ideas from Habermas' critical theory

This paper aims to contribute to research in mathematics education which is exploring, from social constructivist perspectives, the prospects of reconstructing the microculture of the traditional classroom learning environment. A Habermasian perspective is adopted on the need to make invisible and subject to critical scrutiny the hidden frames of reference which constitute the dominant instrumental ideology of traditional mathematics teaching. Three powerful and congruent frames of reference