Research Project Alex Engelhardt

Assessment Processes of Prospective Mathematics Teachers in the Analysis of Interactive Worksheets on Functional Relationships. [Beurteilungsprozesse angehender Mathematiklehrkräfte bei der Analyse interaktiver Arbeitsblätter zu funktionalen Zusammenhängen]

Lesson planning and preparation is an activity that teachers are confronted with on a daily basis. The adequate choice of one or more media is a central task (cf. Kerres & Kalz 2003). The use of (digital) media must not be an end in itself, but should primarily serve the achievement of professional goals and thus always be didactically justified.

From a theoretical perspective, there is much to be said for the use of interactive worksheets based on a dynamic mathematics system (such as GeoGebra) when developing functional thinking. The resulting advantages for learning can also be empirically proven (cf. Lichti 2019). In this context, an interactive worksheet is understood to be an "Internet page containing an applet (a program that can be run in a browser) based on a DGS or DMS and associated tasks" (Vollrath & Roth 2012). One of the best known DGSs is GeoGebra, which is the subject of the following.

 

Relevance

Although the purposeful use of interactive worksheets on functional relationships has been shown to have high learning gains, their use - especially for student hands - remains low (cf. Grünkorn 2020). One reason may be that teachers lack the media and subject didactic skills necessary to assess, for example, digital materials found on the Internet in terms of their quality and potential for use in mathematics instruction. A preliminary study supports this thesis. A large number of applets on functional relationships are already freely available at geogebra.org/materials. Thus, teachers do not have to create new materials themselves, but can select or adapt materials found there specifically for their lessons.
 

Theoretical background

There are some models and sets of criteria to guide (prospective) teachers through an assessment of OER materials. However, these are mostly general and subject-unspecific. For this reason, an interdisciplinary - even within a subject didactics to different content - criteria list is to be considered critically.

For this reason, the present research project will first clarify what specific knowledge (prospective) teachers need in order to be able to use interactive worksheets on functional contexts in a targeted manner in their teaching. For this purpose, the ability to assess interactive worksheets will be differentiated and related to established frameworks such as the TPACK framework according to Mishra and Koehler (2006) or new approaches of digital literacy models such as DigCompEdu (Redecker 2017).
 

Method

In an exploratory study, we will investigate how students proceed when assessing interactive worksheets. For this purpose, students are given an interactive worksheet with a pre-formulated learning objective and are asked to assess this for use in the classroom. The resulting screen recordings and interviews will then be analyzed using qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz 2018).

 

Literature

J. Grünkorn, E. Klieme, A.-K. Praetorius & P. Schreyer (Hrsg.): Mathematikunterricht im internationalen Vergleich. Ergebnisse aus der TALIS-Videostudie Deutschland. Frankfurt am Main: DIPF | Leibniz-Institut für Bildungsforschung und Bildungsinformation 2020.

Kerres, M., Kalz, M. (2003). Mediendidaktik in der Lehrerbildung. Beiträge zur Lehrerbildung, 21 (3), 410-421.

Kuckartz, U. (2018). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Methoden, Praxis, Computerunterstützung (4. Auflage). Weinheim, Basel: Beltz Juventa.

Lichti, M. (2019). Funktionales Denken fördern. Experimentieren mit gegenständlichen Materialien oder Computer-Simulationen. Wiesbaden: Springer Spektrum.

Mishra, P., Koehler, M. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108 (6), 1017–1054.

Redecker, C. (2017). European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators: DigCompEdu. In Y. Punie (Hrsg.), Joint Research Centre (JRC) Science for Policy report. Publications Office of the European Union.

Vollrath, H.-J., Roth, J. (2012). Grundlagen des Mathematikunterrichts in der Sekundarstufe (2. Auflage). Heidelberg: Spektrum Akademischer Verlag.

 

[This dissertation was written and is only available in german. Our summary was translated by our website team. Possible quotations have been translated in accordance with scientific regularia.]