Determining the Factors Affecting Mathematics Teachers’ Documentational Work

Author(s):

Meriç Özgeldi(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

ERG SES G 10, Mathematics and Education

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-08

09:00-10:30

Room:

334. [Main]

Chair:

Carol Taylor

Contribution

At all levels of mathematics education, resources play a critical role in teaching and learning of mathematics; and the integration of resources into mathematical practice has been a motivation for researchers. In recent years, researchers have focused on the interaction between mathematics teacher and resources and their consequences for professional growth. They have attempted to analyze and examine the way of teachers’ interaction with resources from different point of views (e.g., Brown, 2009; Haggarty & Pepin, 2002; Remillard, 1999, 2005; Sherin & Dake, 2004). Particularly, the documentational approach of didactics provides a similar perspective within the research studies on teachers’ use of resources in terms of teachers’ interaction with them, but focuses more precisely on what a teacher needs to do for designing and enacting his/her teaching (Gueudet & Trouche, 2009). As a new area of research, little is known about this approach focusing on the ways of teachers’ documentation work in mathematics. However, there has been a growing interest in the studies of investigating the teacher-resource interaction (e.g., Gueudet, Pepin, & Trouche, 2013; Kieran, Tanguay, & Solares, 2011; Maschietto & Trouche, 2010; Sabra & Trouche, 2011).

The documentational approach provides an intertwined process between teacher and resources which is represented by instrumentation (resources supporting teacher’s activity) and instrumentalization (teacher working on resources) (Gueudet & Trouche, 2009). It includes how teachers engage and interact with resources as well as what kinds of constraints and potentialities of resources shape the teacher. One crucial constructs of the documentational approach of didactics is documentation work as including everything as a resource which plays a crucial role for a teacher who draws on them in his/her activity such as textbook, piece of software, student sheet, discussion with a colleague or with students, etc. Gueudet and Trouche (2009) did not isolate resources from one another; they noticed that resources should be remained as “a set of resources” (p. 200). However, the conceptualization of set of resources in many research studies on teachers’ use of resources has not received sufficient attention; in fact it is often ignored. In the current study, the documentational approach of didactics offers an opportunity not only to investigate mathematics teachers’ use of resources, particularly textbooks, as well as their use of personal records, discussion with students and colleagues, and supportive materials, but also to discuss the factors affecting the documentational work.

The purpose of the study was to determine the factors affecting mathematics teachers’ documentational work. The documentational approach of didactics provided a comprehensive framework in terms of examining mathematics teachers’ documentational work and teachers’ interaction with resources. Mathematics textbooks were considered as main resources for teaching and learning of mathematics since set of mathematics textbooks (e.g., student edition textbook, workbook, teacher edition textbook, and auxiliary book) provided materials for students and teachers. While the research context is Turkey, the findings of the study can be valuable both for European contexts as well as for international context considering that the national characteristics have an impact for rendering more precise information about the documentation work, as proposed by Gueudet and Trouche (2009).

Method

The participants were middle school mathematics teachers who had mathematics teaching experience more than five years and were actively working in a public school in Ankara (in Turkey). The selection criteria for teachers were not depended on representing a best teaching model or a good documentation work. The teachers were not chosen as ideal or model teachers. They spend probably more time on their teaching work especially for planning lessons, managing available resources, and preparing out of class activities. Consequently, eight middle school mathematics teachers (3 male, 5 female) voluntarily participated in the study. The data analysis was conducted in order to identify each participant’s strategy used for the resources. The data obtained from semi-structured interviews with teachers, classroom observations, analysis of teachers’ teaching notes, and sixth and seventh grade mathematics textbooks were analyzed for common themes across participants’ uses of textbooks. Semi-structured interviews were transcribed verbatim. The data was transcribed and coded by the researcher and a second coder to reduce bias in the data analysis and to increase the reliability of the qualitative results. The researcher coded the responses and comments that the teachers had given during the interview sessions. After coding the transcripts, the researcher examined themes and patterns. The interview transcripts were prepared and the coder worked on the same data. The interview transcripts were read several times by the researcher to gather the emerging data. The classroom observations were scheduled on the same day before and after the interviews. The researcher took field notes on the teachers’ activities in the classroom and engaged in the process as an observer. The observation data were checked in terms of the themes obtained from interviews. The teachers’ notes and mathematics textbooks were also checked against the interview analysis.

Expected Outcomes

The findings of the study indicated that the institutional factors influenced the teachers’ documentational work and particularly teachers’ mathematics teaching. The teachers’ explanations showed that there was an impact of the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) in implementation of curriculum and using of textbooks considering that the textbooks were official resources coming from an “official institution” and MoNE decides which textbook can be used by which public schools, and distributes them free of charge to students and teachers among the approved mathematics textbooks. It could be claimed that textbooks have a significant role for mathematics teachers in determining the mathematical content and instruction. The findings suggested that teachers felt constrained to use the textbooks because they mentioned that the inspectors determined whether they used the textbook in their lessons. For instance, one of the teachers who had over 20 years of teaching experience talked about the inspection experience: “[...] One day an inspector came and said, you never ask questions from the textbook; you should use textbooks during the instruction, please be a model for the beginning teachers as well.” It could be claimed that teachers were under pressure of using mathematics textbooks. Therefore, they read the textbook for instructional decisions and tried to explain the subject similarly to this textbook. In this sense, the inspection could be considered as an important factor likely to influence the teachers’ documentational work. Another important findings of the study showed that most of the teachers (6 out of 8) expressed the importance of the national exam questions. They claimed that the students became more motivated when they solved the national exam questions in their teaching. It seemed that students’ mathematics achievement in national exam was critical factor; therefore, the teachers used the national exam questions as a motivation tool.

References

Brown, M. W. (2009). The Teacher-tool relationship: Theorizing the design and use of curriculum materials. In J. T. Remillard, B. A. Herbel-Eisenmann, & G. M. Lloyd (Eds.), Mathematics teachers at work: Connecting curriculum materials and classroom instruction (pp.17-36). New York: Routledge Haggarty, L. & Pepin, B. (2002). An investigation of mathematics textbooks and their use in English, French and German Classrooms: Who Gets an Opportunity to Learn What? British Educational Research Journal, 28(4): 567-590. Remillard, J. T. (1999). Curriculum materials in mathematics education reform: A framework for examining teachers’ curriculum development. Curriculum Inquiry, 29(3), 315–342. Remillard, J. T. (2005). Examining key concepts in research on teachers’ use of mathematics curricula. Review of Educational Research, 75(2), 211–246. Sherin, M. G., & Drake, C. (2004). Identifying patterns in teachers’ use of a reform-based elementary mathematics curriculum. Manuscript submitted for publication. Gueudet, G., & Trouche, L. (2009). Towards new documentation systems for mathematics teachers? Educational Studies in Mathematics, 71, 199-218. Gueudet, G.,Pepin, B. , & Trouche, L. (2013). Collective work with resources: an essential dimension for teacher documentation, ZDM The International Journal on Mathematics Education, 45, 1003–1016. Kieran, C., Tanguay, D., & Solares, A. (2011). Researcher-designed resources and their adaptation within classroom teaching practice: Shaping both the implicit and the explicit. In G. Gueudet, B. Pepin, & L. Trouche (Eds.), Mathematics curriculum material and teacher development: from text to ‘lived’ resources (pp. 189-213). New York: Springer. Maschietto, M., & Trouche, L. (2010). Mathematics learning and tools from theoretical, historical and practical points of view: the productive notion of mathematics laboratories. ZDM The International Journal on Mathematics Education, 42(1), 33–47. Sabra, H. & Trouche, L. (2011). Collective design of an online math textbook: when Individual and collective documentation works meet, Proceedings of CERME 7, 9th to 13th February 2011. Rzesów, Poland.

Author Information

Meriç Özgeldi (presenting / submitting)

Mersin University

Elementary Mathematics Education

Mersin

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