Theorizing teacher use of curriculum material within mathematics classroom practice

Curriculum materials that aim at supporting teachers typically constitute a central component within research-based initiatives to improve mathematics classroom practices. However, the teachers’ use of such curriculum materials and how they explicitly and implicitly mediate the establishment of classroom practices has received minimal attention in research. Therefore, we theorize teachers’ use of CMs from a sociocultural perspective and the overall aim of this programme is to characterize and explain teachers use the cultural tool of curriculum material in the social practices of planning, establishing and reflecting on mathematical classroom instruction.

The empirical data of this programme concern a 649M Skr curriculum-based professional development project – The Mathematics Boost – and we will collect and analyse data from classroom practices, teachers’ collective activities of planning and reflecting upon classroom practice and through interviews with teachers. The results of the study will contribute to theory-building on teachers’ use of curriculum material, the Swedish discourse on effective classroom teaching and to insights of value in designing large-scale curriculum-based professional development projects for mathematics teachers.