Bentley, M. L. (2003). Introducing Critical Constructivism: Critical consciousness through a Critical Constructivist pedagogy. Paper presented at Annual Meeting, American Educational Studies Association, Mexico City, MX. Introducing Critical Constructivism: Critical Consciousness Through A Critical Constructivist Pedagogy A paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Studies Association Mexico City, Mexico October 28, 2003 Michael L. Bentley, EdD Associate Professor, Theory & Practice in Teacher Education A404 Claxton Complex University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996-3442 mbentle1@utk.edu http://web.utk.edu/~mbentle1 Curriculum, research methods, pedagogy: all are much contested cultural terrain. Current directions in American culture are full of contradictory voices. …We live in both/and worlds full of paradoxes and uncertainty where close inspection turns unities into multiplicities, clarities into ambiguities, univocal simplicities into polyvocal complexities. (Lather, 1991, p. xvi) My interest is in theoretical, empirical and pedagogical developments in science education related to critical constructivism. Described previously in Constructivism and Education (Larochelle, Bednarz & Garrison, 1998), critical constructivism refers to a theoretical stance in education related to developing in students an understanding and disposition about knowledge that furthers democratic living. Critical constructivism is not just one more way to address and achieve the ends that are valued in the dominant educational reform movement. I concur with Elliot Eisner (2003) in that, “the function of schools is surely not primarily to enable students to do well on tests, or even to do well in school itself.” (p. 651) Rather the purpose of critical constructivism is to bring about a greater personal and social consciousness in our students and “to enable students to