Research paperTeachers' perspectives of changes in their practice during a technology in mathematics education research project
Section snippets
Introduction and background
Many teachers around the world participate in research projects most often as the ones being researched or vicariously through teaching those who are being researched. In some projects, however, in particular design experiments (Collins, Joseph, & Bielaczyc, 2004), teachers are seen as co-researchers with others who are from outside the schooling environment. As Bielaczyc notes, “design research methodology is meant to provide a means of constructing robust theories of why certain practices are
Design research
Within the project, the methodology used comes under the umbrella of a design research experiment (Anderson and Shattuck, 2012, Feuer et al., 2003:; McKenney & Reeves, 2014). Design experiment approaches “include significant efforts to change educational practices, generally with some innovative materials as well as a reorganisation of the activities of teaching and learning. They also include significant efforts to understand processes of learning and teaching in the situations where the new
Data collection
Data related to technology use by teachers and their students were collected over the three years of the project. Data collection methods included teacher interviews, questionnaires administered in the final months of the project, classroom observation (including task implementation), and field notes detailing participation in project meetings. Interviews with teachers included broad project-based questions focusing attention on what changes the teachers intended to implement in the future and
Case studies
In their seminal work, Windows on mathematical meanings, Noss and Hoyles (1996) developed caricatures of the teachers in their study. Each caricature represented clusters of teachers, synthesising the “views, attitudes, and practices of its members” (p. 188). Each caricature is authentic, but represents a number of participants, not an individual. The caricatures model the complexity of the data, focusing attention by exaggerating some points and ignoring others. A similar approach is being
Discussion: transformative practices
Pru had only moved to experimentation (decision point 10) having taken the plunge and dared to try some new activities. However, it appeared that Pru had no intention of progressing beyond this point, having no commitment to changing the approach to teaching and learning in a technology-rich teaching and learning environment (TRTLE). In an interview early in the project, she indicated that she perceived her mathematics teaching to be too skills-based, but she found it difficult to change. At
Conclusion
In this study the link between teacher perception of their use of digital technologies in their mathematics classrooms during a three year project was explored. Teacher responses to questions regarding (1) their position on their style of teaching, (2) their position on their style of teaching of function by integrating technology into their teaching of Year 9 and 10 mathematics students, and (3) the extent and purpose to which various technology types were used; were analyzed and presented
Acknowledgements
This study was supported under Australian Research Council's Linkage Projects funding scheme (LP0453701). The author was a doctoral student at The University of Melbourne when these data were collected. The views expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Australian Research Council. The author would like to acknowledge that the writing of this paper has been supported by a Publication Grant from The University of Melbourne.
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Introduction
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