An Analysis of Secondary Mathematics Textbooks With Regard to Technology Integration

Abstract

<jats:p>Research has demonstrated that textbooks exert a considerable influence on students’ learning opportunities and that technology has the potential to transform mathematics instruction. This brief report provides a systematic analysis of how technology tasks are integrated into secondary mathematics curricula by analyzing a sample of 20 textbooks. The results indicate that across the entire sample, nearly 15% of tasks incorporated technology, and of those, 21% used it as a reorganizer of students’ mathematical thinking; calculators were the predominant technology utilized. Investigative textbooks were not more likely to incorporate technology than conventional texts, but algebra 2 texts were more likely to include technology than geometry texts. Implications for instruction and teacher preparation are discussed.</jats:p>

Pre-service Teachers’ Use of Technology as Reorganizer to Promote Differing Levels of Conceptual Understanding

“…These results suggest that PTs’ experiences in K-12 schooling align with the findings of Sherman et al, ( 2020 ) regarding the use of technology in secondary mathematics textbooks: that is, teachers most likely used technology, such as graphing calculators, to produce graphs from an equation representation. In addition, the results also suggest two possibilities with regard to their college level mathematics classes.…”

“…Following Sherman et al, ( 2020 ), we considered tasks as using technology as an amplifier if users were not able to move one or more of the mathematical representations dynamically or if the technology were used to produce individual mathematical representations (e.g., graph of an absolute value function) or calculations that students could produce on their own. Tasks that used technology as a reorganizer involved what Vahey et al, ( 2020 ) refer to as inter-representational dynamism : that is, one representation (e.g., a parameter within a function’s equation representation) could be manipulated by the user, resulting in changes to other representations of the function (e.g., graph).…”

“…Recently, Sherman et al, ( 2020 ) investigated the use of technology in different US secondary mathematics curriculum materials. Their research involving 10,100 tasks appearing in 20 different secondary mathematics textbooks revealed that only 8.21% (829) of tasks required students to use technology to some extent.…”

“…Many teachers in the USA continue to use textbooks to guide their daily instruction (Banilower et al, 2018 ). Yet research by Sherman et al, ( 2020 ) suggests that many of these secondary mathematics textbooks only rarely use the dynamic capabilities of technology. Consequently, teachers need either to adapt their curriculum materials themselves or to locate these resources elsewhere, in order to provide students with opportunities to engage with dynamic technology.…”

A Comparative Textbook Analysis on Measures of Center in Selected School Mathematics Textbooks of Australia and Turkey

“…Textbooks have drawn considerable attention among the education community in the world. They are regarded as the main resources that are frequently used by teachers and students in learning and teaching (Fan & Zhu, 2007;Valverde et al, 2002;Sherman et al, 2020;Wang & Fan, 2021). In particular, teachers who are not familiar with statistical concepts tend to rely on textbooks to cover such concepts (Dunn et al, 2015).…”