Instructional Activity and Student Interaction with Digital Resources

Abstract

This chapter examines selected recent studies of the design and use of digital curriculum programmes and dynamic mathematical tools in school mathematics. The examples chosen bring out diversity both in the types of digital resources which are being adopted for teaching school mathematics and in the ways in which these are being taken up in instructional activity. These examples also show how any particular resource can be used in very different ways, and in ways quite different from those espoused by its advocates or intended by the designer. Digitised versions of traditional textbooks are cautiously innovative while individualised learning designs promote more ‘personalised’ instruction. Use of dynamic digital mathematical tools can support exploratory patterns of mathematical activity, underpinned by feedback from students’ interaction with these tools.