How to stimulate rich interactions and reflections in online mathematics teacher education?

PH.D. UDGIVET: August 2010
FORFATTER: Mario Sánchez Aguilar

Kort beskrivelse

The dissertation reports on an study of the emergence of mathematics teachers’ reflections in online in-service teacher education.

The study begins by presenting two reviews of the research literature on mathematics teacher education. Taking into consideration the information obtained through the reviews, but also drawing on my practical experiences in the design and implementation of online courses for mathematics teachers, two research questions are formulated:

1. What are the characteristics of the online interactions that promote emergence of mathematics teachers’ reflections? 
2. Which non-human elements of an online course promote the emergence of mathematics teachers’ reflections?

These two questions are investigated through the design, implementation and analysis of the outcomes of two online in-service courses for mathematics teachers.

Results show that evaluative acts and challenging acts are crucial for the emergence of mathematics teachers’ reflections. They also indicate that theoretical concepts from mathematics education research are resources that help to trigger mathematics teachers’ reflections.

Contributions of this research are

1. A characterisation of the concept of reflection which allows to transform such a cognitive process into a researchable and identifiable entity within an online setting.
2. The identification of the communicative characteristics of an online interaction that favour the emergence of mathematics teachers’ reflections.
3. The identification of elements in the design of an online course that promote the emergence of teachers’ reflections.    

Empiri

The main empirical data in this dissertation are asynchronous discussions in online forums. They were obtained from a digital platform (Moodle) where the mathematics teachers took their courses.