From Text to 'Lived' Resources: Mathematics Curriculum Materials and Teacher Development

Product Description What kinds of curriculum materials do mathematics teachers select and use, and how? This question is complex, in a period of deep evolutions of teaching resources, with the proficiency of online resources in particular. How do teachers learn from these materials, and in which ways do they ‘tailor’ them for their use and pupil learning? Teachers collect resources, select, transform, share, implement, and revise them. Drawing from the French term « ingénierie documentaire »,we call these processes « documentation ». The literal English translation is « to work with documents », but the meaning it carries is richer. Documentation refers to the complex and interactive ways that teachers work with resources; in-class and out-of-class, individually, but also collectively. Review From the reviews:“This book is clearly intended for mathematics education researchers who investigate the preparation and teaching of K–12 mathematics teachers, it would also be of interest to mathematics teacher educators and curriculum designers. … The book is organized into four parts – each part has an introductory chapter and is followed by an ‘expert’s reaction.’ … a worthwhile read for those who are interested in how teachers use a variety of resources, material and non-material, digital and non-digital.” (Annie Selden, MAA Reviews, December, 2012) From the Back Cover Curriculum materials and the interaction with these materials and resources is central in teacher education and professional development. How teachers use and learn from materials fundamentally depends on the interactions between three components: the reader, the material and the context. Teachers’ use and learning from text-based materials depends to a large extent on the characteristics of the materials, on the teaching activity in which the teacher is engaged, teachers’ beliefs and knowledge, and how these are aligned with the curriculum. What kinds of curriculum materials do teachers select and use, and how? How do teachers learn from these materials, and in which ways do they ‘tailor’ them for their use and pupil learning? These factors interact in complex ways, as teachers select, interpret and shape the materials, individually and collaboratively with groups of colleagues. The characteristics of the resources shape the teacher’s activity; analysing these characteristics enlightens the mathematics presented to the students, and more generally the classroom practice and the development of teacher professional knowledge. The purpose of this book is to provide a wider perspective on this issue in the field of mathematics education. It studies curriculum materials and their uses, in addition to investigations of teacher adaptation and use of those materials, and pays particular attention to digital resources. Teacher’s professional activity is studied as a whole, at different moments and in different contexts, in-class and out-of-class, with a variety of agents. The collective dimensions of this activity, the role of a variety of collectives for teachers professional development, constitute a major focus of the work presented here. About the Author Ghislaine Gueudet is professor in mathematics didactics. She works at the University of Western Brittany in France. She is co-director of the CREAD (Center for Research on Education, Learning and Didactics). Her research concerns the interactions between teachers and resources (with a specific focus on online resources), and their consequences in terms of professional development. This theme lead her to develop, together with Luc Trouche, a documentational approach to didactics.Web page: http://cread.bretagne.iufm.fr/spip.php?article447Birgit Pepin is professor of mathematics didactics at Sør-Trøndelag University College in Trondheim, Norway. For many years she has worked with mathematics teachers in terms of professional development, and in different countries. One of her main research