Mini bio:

Tom Bassarear is a professor at Keene State College in New Hampshire. He received his BA from Claremont-McKenna College, his MA from Claremont Graduate School, and was awarded an Ed.D degree from the University of Massachusetts.

Tom's complementary degrees in mathematics and educational psychology have strongly influenced his convictions about education-specifically, mathematics education. Before teaching at the college level, he taught both middle school and high school mathematics. Since coming to Keene State, he has spent many hours in elementary classrooms observing teachers and working with them in school and workshop settings.

'Why I wrote the book':

My desire to create this book came from two experiences. First, I began college as a science major and my first teaching job was as a high school science teacher. Although many of the science labs in high school and college were 'canned', I still had many wonderful positive experiences of discovery in my labs. It just made sense to have the students' first encounter with new ideas be at the concrete, inquiry level.

After the students have done the lab, they have literally begun construction of a concept map in their heads. Both from the perspective of Piaget and Bruner, they have a "first draft" of their organization of the concepts at hand. They also have hypotheses and questions which often generate rich class discussions. THEN it makes sense for the instructor and the textbook to present the conceptual framework in a more formal perspective.

My second experience was in graduate school at the University of Massachusetts, where I first encountered the notion of a constructivist epistemology. During my graduate work and during my early years at KSC, I was baffled that the current textbooks in mathematics did not seem to fit well with the NCTM Standards, especially the Teaching Standards.

In writing the textbook and Explorations, I sought to create an environment that reflected my understanding of learning theory, both cognitive and affective dimensions. This meant that the students could not simply be recipients of the big ideas of mathematics-while one can teach algorithms (e.g., step 1, step 2, etc.), I just don't believe you can teach big ideas, for example. It meant that the book had to be written in language that would work for students-many instructors and even students who use the text have contacted me to tell me that this is the first math book they have ever been able to read.

Author contact info: tbassare@keene.edu