Discipline-Based Education Research Group
Date of this Version
4-3-2013
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Abstract
In this talk I will present the findings from my study of the educative nature of four middle school mathematics curriculum materials. Educative curriculum materials are materials for Grades K‐12 that are “intended to promote teacher learning in addition to students’” (Davis & Krajcik, 2005, p. 3). I particularly investigated the opportunities for teacher learning embedded within four middle school curricular series in the areas of introduction to variable and geometric transformations. Drawing on the work on educative curriculum materials from science education (Davis & Krajcik, 2005) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1985), I investigated opportunities to learn by examining the content presented (i.e., subject‐matter, pedagogical content, curricula) and certain aspects of the voice (i.e., use of personal pronouns, modality) of teachers’ guides. Results indicated that although all four curricular series included content supports, these supports may be insufficient. In addition, the ways in which authors spoke to teachers in the written text may further hinder teachers’ opportunities to learn. Implications for curriculum development, teacher education, and research will be discussed.
Comments
For DBER Group Discussion on 2013‐04‐04
Copyright (c) 2013 Lorraine Males