Teaching Mathematics in a Context of Lockdown: A Study Focused on Teachers’ Praxeologies

Abstract

This study aims to explore how teachers from four countries—France, Israel, Italy, and Germany—manage their teaching–learning activity in the context of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. About 700 teachers from the four countries participated in this study. They were given an online questionnaire that involved 22 open-ended items, in which they were requested to complete the items that were structured taking into account the relationships between teacher, students, mathematics and resources. The qualitative analysis of teachers’ answers was carried out, referring to both the meta-didactical transposition model and Bishop’s framework on values to investigate teachers’ teaching–learning activities and the reasons underlying their choices. The empirical analysis suggests four tasks corresponding to the main challenges that teachers had to face during the time of lockdown: (a) managing distance learning to support students’ learning through specific methodologies; (b) managing distance learning to develop assessment; (c) managing distance learning to support those students that face difficulties and/or are living a difficult situation/developing inclusive teaching; and (d) managing distance learning to exploit its potentialities for fostering typical mathematical processes. The values that motivated the teachers to change their teaching–learning activities are discussed, conclusions of how the time of lockdown affects the mathematics teaching is drawn, and finally, recommendations and insights from this study are shared.

Making Good of a Pandemic: A Long-Distance Remedial Summer Course in Calculus

“…[18] for a panoramic review of the state of the art and [19][20][21][22] for the Italian context). The COVID-19 pandemic made at-distance teaching the only viable possibility, but one should take notice of its effects on teachers' praxeologies ( [23]) and evaluate the advantages in assessments-such as the greater flexibility in test-taking and faster scoring-towards the importance "that mathematics education should be for all students, including those who have special needs, who live in poverty" ( [24]).…”

“…A thorough revision of teachers' praxeologies relating to a transmissive approach to teaching should be conducted in order to encourage situations where students would be more active ( [23]). A better tutor-student ratio should allow for individual granular feedback on weekly homework, although, as mentioned, this fact is possibly not very important.…”

Experiences and Challenges of Distance Learning During Covid-19 Pandemic From Educators’ Point of View: A Review

“…Teacher's anxiety about new and unfamiliar form of teaching highly affected their perception on distance learning. Nevertheless, some teachers saw an opportunity to create something new like using simulations in online learning or introducing concepts using daily activities (Niemi and Kousan 2020, Aldon et al 2021, Gao and Zhang 2020.…”

“…Students-teachers' communication became more intense. Some teachers perceived this as a positive impact, while other teachers felt disturbed where they had trouble relaxing (Aldon et al 2021).…”

“…Therefore, teacher had to think of another method to deliver subjects. Some teachers also thought that several subjects are difficult to be taught using e-learning method, one of them is mathematics (Mailizar et al 2020, Aldon et al 2021. For mathematics, it is easier for teacher to teach face to face as they can provide math solutions instantly on board.…”