Designing for Enactment: Lessons Learned from Teachers’ Perceptions and Use of HQIM in Mathematics

• In Event: What Does it Take to Maximize HQIM's Potential to Support Math Instruction and Student Flourishing?

Abstract

Objectives

While instructional materials in mathematics are widely recognized as critical for supporting student learning, less is known about how teachers read and take up different parts of these materials and which features most influence their work (Dietiker et al., 2018; Taylor, 2016). Without understanding how teachers engage with instructional materials, reform efforts risk overlooking the ways teachers actually plan, adapt, and make instructional decisions, limiting the potential to meaningfully influence teaching and learning. This study examines how teachers engage with high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) across planning, reflection, and classroom use to identify features that support instructional practice. By focusing on teachers’ lived interactions with materials, we seek to understand how HQIM function in real classrooms and where their design may need to evolve to meet teachers’ needs.

Perspectives

Teaching is inherently contextual and unpredictable, shaped by complex interactions among teacher, students, content, and context (Cohen et al., 2003). HQIM promise to manage this complexity by serving as a roadmap for content and pedagogy. Ultimately, however, teachers’ enactment of materials varies depending on how they interpret and adapt developers’ designs within their classrooms (Lipsky, 1980; Remillard & Heck, 2014). Understanding these enactments is essential for improving the value of instructional guidance embedded in HQIM.

Methods and Data

This study aimed to understand how teachers perceive, use, and supplement high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) in mathematics during lesson enactment. We collected data through classroom observations, surveys, and interviews with 40 teachers using a range of HQIM in seven public school districts across five U.S. states. Each lesson was video-recorded, and teachers completed surveys on their planning processes and lesson reflections. Follow-up interviews explored their use of the materials and perceptions of the material’s affordances and limitations. Data analysis employed a grounded, iterative approach. Observation notes, survey responses, and interview transcripts were open-coded to capture teacher practices and perceptions. Through constant comparison and analytic memoing, these codes were refined into categories and synthesized into themes characterizing teachers’ interactions with HQIM and the conditions shaping enactment.

Results

Analysis revealed three themes that illuminate the instructional support HQIM in mathematics are well-positioned to provide and where their influence is limited. First, materials consistently influenced the scope and sequence of mathematical content, informing daily lesson topics across districts. In some contexts, HQIM also shaped lesson routines and teacher-student interactions around content. Second, teachers frequently brought their own resources to their interactions with HQIM, modifying, adding, or replacing activities to align with their pedagogical vision or student needs. Third, planning habits mediated teachers’ interpretation of a lesson’s mathematical point and guided in-the-moment instructional decisions. These findings suggest HQIM reliably frame content and organization, but their influence on pedagogical decision-making is mediated by teachers’ interpretive work.

Significance

This project offers lessons for math curriculum designers about how teachers understand and enact materials, and which features of HQIM most impact enactment. It contributes to the improvement of HQIM and related tools that better support teaching that helps children flourish.

Authors

• Mike Henderson, University of Michigan

• Darrius D. Robinson, University of Michigan

• Deborah Loewenberg Ball, University of Michigan

• Martha Curren-Preis, University of Michigan

• Heather Beasley, University of Michigan