Analyzing teachers’ knowledge based on their approach to the information provided by technology

Funding Information: Funding: This study was supported by national funds through FCT–Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., within the scope of the project 2022.03892.PTDC. Declaration of interest: The author declares no competing interest. Data availability: Data generated or analyzed during this study are available from the author on request. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 by authors; licensee EJSME by Bastas.Teachers’ knowledge plays a central role in technology integration. In this study we analyze situations, where there is some divergence between the mathematical results and the information offered by the graphing calculator (lack of mathematical fidelity), putting the focus in the teachers and in their approaches. The goal of this study is to analyze, in the light of knowledge for teaching mathematics with technology (KTMT) model, the teachers’ professional knowledge, assuming the situations of lack of mathematical fidelity as having the potential to reveal some characteristics of their knowledge. Specifically, considering the teaching of functions at 10th grade (age 16), we intend to analyze: (1) What knowledge do the teachers have of technology and of its mathematical fidelity? (2) What can the teachers’ options related to situations of lack of mathematical fidelity tell us about their knowledge in other KTMT domains? The study adopts a qualitative and interpretative approach based on the case studies of two teachers. Data were collected by interviews and class observation, being the analysis guided by the KTMT model. The main result points to the relevance of the mathematics and technology knowledge. However, there is evidence of some difficulties to integrate the information provided by the technology with the mathematics, and also of some interference of the teaching and learning and technology knowledge, and specifically of the knowledge related to the students. This suggests that the analysis of the teachers’ actions in relation to situations of lack of mathematical fidelity, can be useful to characterize their KTMT.publishersversionpublishe

Comics in the Classroom - What\u27s at the center of the solar system?

Teaching in today’s classroom looks vastly different from 20 years ago. Today, many teachers have access to projectors, computers, smartboards, laptops and tablets, and have vast amounts of information and programs available at the click of a button. However, having access to all of these resources is not always beneficial, especially if we are not equipped to incorporate it into instruction. The 2015 Project Tomorrow Survey findings showed a number of aspects that support technology use in the classroom. Highlights of this data, related to the Center for Integrated Access Network’s (CIAN) digital comic book, include the following results (Project Tomorrow, 2016): Thirty-eight percent (38%) of students find online videos to help with their homework and 27% regularly watch videos created by their teachers. Almost two-thirds of students want to use digital games for learning in school. Teachers are using more digital content in their classroom than ever before. This year’s leader board: videos (68%), digital games (48%), online curriculum (36%), online textbooks (30%), and animations (27%). When utilized effectively, the use of digital resources in the classroom can engage students in a way print resources may not. At the Center for Integrated Access Networks (CIAN), an Engineering Research Center funded from 2008−2018 by the National Science Foundation, the education department worked to develop new and innovative digital resources to engage students in learning science content (Figure 1). One resource created, the CIAN Comic Book, focuses on educating students about optics, technology, and scientific discovery, and is well-aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This article suggests one way to utilize the CIAN digital comic book by incorporating it in an Argument Driven Inquiry (ADI) lesson

An Integrated Approach with Real-World Scenarios in Portugal

Funding Information: This work is supported by national funds through FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology, I. P., in the context of the project PTDC/CED-EDG/32422/2017. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.The implementation of an integrated approach of STEM education with real-life scenarios is crucial to motivate students to learn and to better prepare them for real-world challenges, which is a big challenge for teachers. Therefore, there are implications for teaching practice and consequently the need for professional development. This paper presents an integrated approach of STEM education developed in the context of a collaborative professional development programme implemented in an exclusive online context, provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. The programme aimed at providing teachers with knowledge and skills to develop STEM integrated tasks to be implemented in class. This study used a quantitative–qualitative approach to answer the research questions, using mixed methods to collect data. Participants are primary school teachers who participated in the programme during four months in the school year 2020/2021. Based on data collected from questionnaires, participant observation and teachers’ final reports, it was verified that teachers recognized the importance of obtaining training in STEM education and that this type of professional development was very relevant and improved their knowledge and skills to implement STEM hands-on practices in class. In addition, a case study of a science and mathematics 6th grade teacher is presented to illustrate how she implement integrated STEM tasks in class based on a real-world scenario such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, teachers recognized the importance of this approach and that it increases students’ motivation to learn.publishersversionpublishe

The pedagogical internship during the lockdown: narratives of future teachers

The pedagogical internship is considered by future teachers as a determining factor in the whole process of initial training, occupying a significant place. It involves moments of authentic and experiential knowledge of the school, and its public, as well as of the teaching and learning process, always with the aim of forming reflective professionals and concomitantly researchers of their practices. That is, a future professional socially committed and able to introduce significant changes in their practices and pedagogical innovation. In times of pandemic caused by COVID-19, which led to lockdown, non-faceto-face teaching practices were privileged in different educational institutions and future teachers, in a probationary situation, were invited to participate. In this scenario, the pedagogical internship required overcoming and (re)adaptation. This article has as main objective to carry out a documentary analysis of 10 final reports of Supervised Teaching Practice to understand how future teachers narrate their experiences during the pedagogical internship and understand how they managed to cope with the constraints that the lockdown produced in the school in years 2019/2020 and 2020/2021. The investigative process follows a qualitative and interpretative approach, carried out through procedures of categorisation and cross-referencing of the data corpus. For data analysis we used MAXQDA (Software for Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research), to survey and content analysis of the information collected in the final reports. From the analysis of the data collected, it stands out that the use of digital tools contributed to enabling distance teaching and learning, making the practice more innovative, which allowed the dialogue in real-time, as well as a more or less close monitoring of the children, depending, of course, on the adaptation of the cooperating teachers to new technologies and on the integration, or not, of future teachers in the contact platforms that they maintained with the children.This work is funded by National Funds through the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., within the scope of the project Ref.ª UIDB/05507/2020. Furthermore, we would like to thank the Centre for Studies in Education and Innovation (CI&DEI) for their support.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Preparing the Future Workforce: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Policy in K12 Education in Wisconsin

Last December, the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Coalition - a national organization of more than 600 groups representing knowledge workers, educators, scientists, engineers, and technicians wrote to President-elect Obama urging him to "not lose sight of the critical role that STEM education plays in enabling the United States to remain the economic and technological leader of the 21st century global marketplace." While that imperative appears to have resonated in Washington, has it and should it resonate in Madison? This report attempts to answer that question by examining the extent to which STEM skills are a necessity for tomorrow's Wisconsin workforce, whether our schools are preparing students to be STEM-savvy workers, and where STEM falls in the state's list of educational priorities

Integrating Technology With Student-Centered Learning

Reviews research on technology's role in personalizing learning, its integration into curriculum-based and school- or district-wide initiatives, and the potential of emerging digital technologies to expand student-centered learning. Outlines implications

Old New Media: Closed-circuit Television and the Classroom

This article explores closed-circuit television (CCTV) and its ‘bright promise stage’, as it was contemplated, marketed, and implemented as a low-cost classroom tool. After the Federal Communications Commission issued the 1952 Sixth Report and Order, many schools and communities sought to bring educational television to the classroom. However, this model was financially out of reach for most. CCTV was a more affordable version of educational television that could cater to specific classroom needs and allow schools to create their own in-house network. CCTV represents just one of many new technologies that have been promoted as ideal for classroom instruction over the last century. Using articles and advertisements from popular press magazines, educational journals, books, and archival materials, this article seeks to illuminate the ‘social practices and conflicts’ that contributed to the conversations around CCTV’s classroom utility. It concludes by connecting CCTV’s promotion in the 1950s to more recent new media technologies