TECHNOLOGY TOOLS FOR MATHEMATICS TEACHER LEARNING: How Might They Support the Development of Capacity for Specific Teaching Assignments?

Abstract

This chapter addresses the role of technological tools in mathematics teacher learning within a perspective that conceives of this learning as practice-based and work-specific. The notion of practice-based and work-specific mathematics teacher education is envisioned as a just-in-time endeavor emphasizing important continuities between prospective and practicing teacher education. It does so by proposing a conceptualization of mathematics teacher learning along the professional lifespan as recognized with badges enabling holders to exercise their professional expertise in particular work assignments. In turn, the procurement of these badges follows participation in a set of technologically-mediated experiences that approximate the work of teaching using representations of practice. A set of diverse badges is envisioned as available for practitioners to procure the skills needed for the work they desire to do. Building on scholarship that documents the use of technologies in mathematics teacher education, the chapter sketches how a combination of those technologies may serve the achievement of teacher learning outcomes. The chapter proposes a blend of Engeström’s (1999) model of an activity system with Herbst and Chazan’s (2012) model of an instructional exchange to identify moreprecisely objects of activity and the technological tools teacher-learners can use in pursuing such work-specific learning. These considerations help the authors illustrate the roles that various technologies, including technologies for media play and annotation, social interaction and communication, storyboarding, animation, gaming, and simulation, and technologies for mathematical work and inscription, could play in different teacher learning activities. Building on the authors’ earlier and present work studying geometry teaching and supporting teacher learning in geometry, examples provided demonstrate how technology could support such teacher learning activities toward a badge for teaching secondary geometry.