Nikolai N. Konstantinov’s Authorial Math Pedagogy for People with Wings

Abstract

This special issue is dedicated to an innovative pedagogy by Soviet-Russian math educator Nikalai Nikolaevich Konstantinov. Diverse and at times contradictory interviews with Konstantinov, math teachers involved in his pedagogy, and former students, available sources in Russian and English, and my own memoirs as a former student of Konstantinov, I tried to reconstruct, define, analyze, evaluate, and problematize his innovative pedagogy. Konstantinov himself defined his innovative pedagogy as promoting “people with wings” – promoting initiative, creativity, ownership, critical thinking, and self-realization among students in math and other areas. In math instruction, Konstantinov focuses on providing students with choices of math problems, interrogating students’ math solutions, and offering guidance in a direct response to the questions and difficulties that the students experience in their particular math problems. I demonstrate his pedagogical approach is integrative aiming not only at math. Emerging tensions between students’ curricular choice and teacher’s imposition, educational elitism and social equality, and teacher’s authorial freedom and Konstantinov’s support are discussed.