“Tell me about”: a logbook of teachers’ changes from face-to-face to distance mathematics education

Abstract

In 2020, the emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic brought a drastic and sudden change in teaching practices, from the physical space of the classrooms to the virtual space of an e-environment. In this paper, through a qualitative analysis of 44 collected essays composed by Italian mathematics teachers from primary school to undergraduate level during the spring of 2020, we investigate how the Italian teachers perceived the changes due to the unexpected transition from a face-to-face setting to distance education. The analysis is carried out through a double theoretical lens, one concerning the whole didactic system where the knowledge at stake is mathematics and the other regarding affective aspects. The integration of the two theoretical perspectives allows us to identify key elements and their relations in the teachers’ narratives and to analyze how teachers have experienced and perceived the dramatic, drastic, and sudden change. The analysis shows the process going from the disruption of the educational setting to the teachers’ discovery of key aspects of the didactic system including the teacher’s roles, a reflection on mathematics and its teaching, and the attempt to reconstruct the didactic system in a new way.

Exploring students’ mathematical discussions in a multi-level hybrid learning environment

“…In Italy, as in many other countries, the reorganisation of teaching methods was entrusted almost entirely to teachers, and teachers and learners were frequently not sufficiently prepared to tackle this technological transition (Albano et al, 2021;Engelbrecht et al, 2020a). For this reason, especially for young students, the great risk of this sudden transition to DL consisted in the loss of important pedagogical strategies based on a constructivist approach, in favour of activities based on technology but following a transmissive approach to mathematics teaching and learning (Bakker & Wagner, 2020).…”

Ergonomic, epistemological and existential challenges of integrating digital tools into school mathematics

“…A further study of a different type offers insights into the existential and epistemological dimensions. Based on qualitative thematic analysis of essays in which Italian mathematics teachers volunteered their experience of the shift from face-to-face to distance education during the pandemic, this study highlights a potential for longer-term and more far-reaching impact (Albano et al, 2021, pp. 32–33):Generally speaking, the traumatic change in the educational setting plunged teachers into an unexpected and unthinkable world where the teachers become aware that the didactic system has to be reconstructed.…”

Assessment in mathematics: a study on teachers’ practices in times of pandemic

“…In tune with this idea, different studies have been developed to reflect on how the pandemic era has affected the teaching–learning of mathematics and on the possible changes in the future of mathematics education. Some of these studies, for example, investigated the ways in which the emergency situation has inspired teachers to find solutions to problems they had not encountered before (Flores & Swennen, 2020 ), such as completely reconstructing the didactic system (Albano et al, 2021 ) or developing their professional growth in new and unprecedented environments (Huang et al, 2022 ).…”