Reading Minds and Other Superpowers: Teachers’ Ideas for Technologies in the Classroom (Poster 40)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Sunday 11:40 a.m.
  In Poster Session: Learning Environments and Pedagogical Strategies

Abstract

Although technology proliferates in elementary classrooms, teachers still play a role in selecting, implementing, and integrating that technology. This study investigates how teachers would create technology to solve pressing problems in their classrooms by using a “superpowers” interview wherein teachers articulate the superpowers they would like to help them teach generally, teach math, teach with technology, and teach with a specific mathematics learning technology, ST Math. Results are organized around a model that details realms of teacher influence (self, students, external resources). The desired superpowers within these realms reveal information about teachers’ philosophies for education (teacher- or student-centered) and generate ideas for the types of technologies that would be most valued by teachers of each philosophy.

Authors

• Teomara Rutherford, University of Delaware

• Sotheara Veng, University of Delaware