Ed Begle’s Laws of Mathematics Education

This post from Dan Meyer discussed Ed Begle’s two laws of mathematics education, which feel as relevant today as they did during his presentation in October 1970.

1. The validity of an idea about mathematics education and the plausibility of that idea are uncorrelated.
2. Mathematics education is much more complicated than you expected even though you expected it to be more complicated than you expected.

You can read all of Begle’s remarks beginning at page 27 of this document, which also includes many other presentations and papers from the same conference.