A case of interpretations of social: A response to Steffe and Thompson

In their response to my (1996) article, Steffe and Thompson argued that I h ave taken an early position of Vygotsky's and that his later work is subsum ed in and developed by von Glasersfeld. I argue that the two theories, Vygo tsky's and radical constructivism, are, on the contrary, quite distinct and that this distinction, when seen as a dichotomy, is productive. I suggest that radical constructivists draw on a weak image of the role of social lif e. I argue that a thick notion of social leads to a complexity of sociocult ural theories concerning the teaching and learning of mathematics, a perspe ctive that is firmly located in the debates surrounding cultural theory of the last 2 decades.