Abstract:

In an ongoing two-year school development and research project researchers are collaborating with mathematics teachers and school leaders on two elementary schools. The purpose is to investigate how conditions for teaching of mathematics change with modern digital textbooks that use artificial intelligence and how the teaching can be developed with these. The project also studies how a new collaboration model between schools, municipalities and academia can contribute to knowledge development and dissemination of knowledge. The research project, which is a national experimental activity commissioned by the government, will produce a long-term sustainable collaboration model between universities and schools that leads to research applicable in school activities and strengthens a school built on a scientific basis.

This research project aims at directly facing still unresolved questions. The use of digital tools is increasing, but the struggle to implement them into teaching still challenges teachers and researchers (Drijvers, 2015). At the same time, progressively, analogue teaching materials are being replaced by digital resources (Yerushalmy, 2016) and all major educational material publishers are selling an increasing proportion of digital textbooks. The knowledge of how the teaching is affected and how teachers’ practice is changed by this use is lacking. Current research shows that digital textbooks are particularly difficult to integrate into mathematics teaching in a significant way (Pepin, Choppin, Ruthven, & Sinclair, 2017; Utterberg, Tallvid, Lundin & Lindström, 2018) and that teachers' knowledge of artificial intelligence in school need to increase (Hrastinski et al., 2019).

The method is based on Change Laboratory (Engeström, 2016). Once a month, mathematics teachers meet at their own school together with researchers to collectively develop the teaching. Experiences from the use of digital textbooks are discussed, and new lessons are planned which then are tested. This is done in an iterative process. Once every semester, researchers, teachers and principals from the two schools meet, where the purpose is to spread and develop knowledge between the schools based on jointly identified needs.

The methodology aims to strengthen a scientific approach among the teachers by supporting teachers, through an iterative process, to consciously and systematically make informed decisions about how the teaching is to be carried out. This is done in systematic cooperation with the participating researchers, which gives the teachers knowledge of how evidence-based school development can be conducted. Exchange of experiences between school leaders provides increased learning about a leadership that supports the scientific approach at their own school. To be able to understand, design and analyze how digital textbooks challenge mathematics education, besides the participation of practitioners, competence from several scientific disciplines is also needed. Thus, there are researchers from informatics, educational science and mathematics education involved in the project.

In this paper, we will present expectations and experiences of the 16 participating teachers and the three school leaders.

Keywords:

Mathematics Education, Teachers, Digital Textbooks, E-books, Digital Resources, Digital Tools, Activity Theory, Change Laboratory.