Designing a Digital Curriculum Environment for Preservice Teacher Education

• In Event: Proportionality Dynabook: Because “To Know Is Not Enough” in Mathematics Teacher Professional Development

Abstract

Proportionality Dynabook is a design exploration of a dynamic math resource for preservice teachers. Digital book readers such as the Kindle and iPad have popularized a not-so-new idea of digitizing the textbook. Online textbooks currently provide links to printable worksheets, supplemental activities, and even animations and manipulatives. But many digital textbooks are simply electronic renderings of traditional print media, with some features of the digital world, such as highlighting, font-size adjustments, and text-to-speech capabilities. This paper describes four productive design tensions (Tatar, 2007) that guided the Dynabook team in going beyond an electronic textbook to support teacher candidates with a range of math and pedagogical needs.
Over the course of the project we designed, developed, and implemented three iterations of Dynabook using processes of design research and action research. Our team is made up of designers, developers, and users across four institutions, and further assisted by an outside evaluator and advisors. The thoughtful balancing activities of all these stakeholders both surfaced these tensions and made them productive.
Tension: Addressing learning needs of general education teacher candidates who have higher math knowledge but little pedagogical experience vs special education teacher candidates with less math knowledge but more pedagogical experience.
Beyond the textbook: We developed multiple linear pathways through proportionality. Users can start with any combination of topic and activity type. We also embedded strategic scaffolding such as “Stop-and-Think” points, addressing math, pedagogy, technical needs.
Tension: Personalizing Dynabook to match the immediate teaching needs of our two teacher educators vs designing a digital resource that could be used by a broader audience of pre-service educators.
Beyond the textbook: We supported teacher-educators with an “Assignments” tool that would allow them to define a specific learning pathway for their students and to keep track of the degree to which students completed assignments and easily review their work in context.
Tension:. In-class vs individual use. Dynabook’s initial use-model was that of a typical textbook: readers engaging with content individually in preparation for participation in class. Through the iterations of Dynabook and practices, it’s potential as part of the social interaction in class emerged.
Beyond the textbook: As the teacher-educators envisioned and developed lessons using Dynabook in class, the enabling affordances of the shared space we call “interactive whiteboard” clearly emerged. Through this space, students share solutions to problems, and teacher-educators orchestrate formative assessment conversations using the materials shared on the whiteboard.
Tension:. Relying on the familiar vs cuing (and supporting) new behaviours.
Beyond the textbook: Many of the conversations among stakeholders have taken the form of negotiations between familiarity and novelty. Some of the features that have benefitted from this tension are the whiteboard, the assignment, and the videolite format, as well as a suite of new interactives including the ratio bar visualizer, gears, and the connected function simulator (graph, table, equation, animation).

Authors

• Teresa Lara-Meloy, Education Development Center, Inc.

• Elizabeth Murray, CAST - Sr Research Scientist

• Michelle Lea Phillips, Inverness Research - Phillips & Associates