Abstract:

This paper reports on preservice teachers’ acceptance and use of technology and highlights the affordances and challenges they identified in using technology to create multimedia learning materials, specifically digital mathematics storybooks, for use in the development of the number sense and mathematical thinking of young learners aged 6 to 9. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) with its four constructs, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions, have been used as theoretical lens to investigate prospective preservice teachers’ acceptance and use of tablets to create mathematics learning materials.
Seventy-nine prospective preservice teachers in the fourth year cohort had to create hard copy mathematics storybooks as part of an assignment in their Mathematics Education module. Eleven of these students volunteered to participate in the research study on using tablets to create digital instead of hard copy storybooks with two students working together and nine individually. The storybooks had to be created for a target grade (Grade R, 1, 2 or 3) chosen by each student teacher and had to include mathematics questions derived from the context, and covering all five content areas of the mathematics curriculum, i.e. Numbers, Operations and Relationships; Early Algebra; Space and Shape; Measurement; and Data Handling. Data were collected using a questionnaire and focus group interviews after the completion of the storybooks.

Preliminary results show that with regard to performance expectancy, preservice teachers perceived tablets as useful tools for creating storybooks and learning material for the teaching of mathematics, that digital storybooks are very useful for developing concepts in all mathematics strands, and that using tablets in the classroom can enhance learner understanding. Participants differed on the perceived ease of use of tablets: three of the eleven preservice teachers perceived the use of tablets for creating digital stories as easy, three did not perceive it as easy and five gave neutral responses (effort expectancy). Preservice teachers mostly agreed that people significant to them think they should use tablets for teaching mathematics (social influence). Concerning facilitating conditions, participants perceived a lack of support with difficulties during the process of creating their digital storybooks. Participants found the choice of apps as well as the combining of apps (app smashing) the most challenging aspect of the project; while the new possibilities that the tablets brought to enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics, the most satisfying. This redefined storybook task developed preservice teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge and fostered higher order thinking skills such as creativity and synthesis. The task further enabled the online sharing of the storybooks leading to feedback from international audiences. After the project, preservice teachers indicated that they intended to use tablets regularly in future for the teaching and learning of mathematics.

Keywords:

Digital mathematics storybooks, technological pedagogical content knowledge.