Curriculum materials and educative opportunities: observing teacher positionings from teachers’ guides

ABSTRACT

Well-written curriculum materials are known to support teacher learning. Less discussion has focused on whether teachers’ guides, curriculum materials written specifically for teachers by textbook publishers, provide sufficient support. In this study, I analyse four US-based mathematics teachers’ guides to understand the opportunities within them for teacher learning. Drawing on positioning theory, I conceptualised teacher learning opportunities as teacher positionings observable from teachers’ guides. With this conceptualisation, I explored teacher positionings that were regularly or idiosyncratically observable from the selected teachers’ guides. The results revealed only a small number of regularly observable positionings existed, indicating limited opportunities for teacher learning from the guides. Irregularly, or idiosyncratically observed positionings provided limited opportunities, as well. Based on the findings, I suggest the necessity of presenting diverse positionings to best utilise the potential from teachers’ guides as materials for teacher learning.

KEYWORDS:

• curriculum material
• professionalism
• teacher education
• mathematics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This assumption was made due to analytic purposes. This study drew on positioning theory to observe teacher learning opportunities embedded in TGs. When identifying positionings, I assumed that the texts in TGs are for teachers’ professional learning. Forgoing this assumption would entail a sound method of separating educative texts from non-educative texts, which seems hardly possible in the context of the current study. Therefore, I treat all texts as written with educative purposes.

2. The real idiosyncratic positionings (those not in the 43 positionings but appearing sporadically in any of the TGs) were not examined in the study as they went beyond the scope of the current research.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Graduate School at Michigan State University; and the Korea University Grant.

Notes on contributors

Heejoo Suh

Heejoo Suh is a researcher and teacher educator in mathematics education. Heejoo’s research interests include teacher professionalism, curriculum material, alternative approaches to inquiry, and beyond.