Investigating the alignment to mathematical modelling of teacher-created mathematical modelling activities available online

ABSTRACT

Mathematical modelling has garnered national and international interest due to its importance. Mathematical modelling can develop students’ mathematical understandings, teamwork and communication practices. The ability for teachers to select appropriate mathematical modelling tasks is important to ensure the benefits listed for students are realized. The purpose of this study was to investigate the alignment to mathematical modelling of teacher-created curricular resources available through the Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) website. The TPT website, where teachers can buy and sell resources, is used by millions of teachers each year. Through this research, we sought to investigate if the curricula that resulted in searches for mathematical modelling are aligned to mathematical modelling. We found that about 6% of the curricula resources in our searches could be considered mathematical modelling. These curricular resources are described. We also categorized the curricular resources from the searches, that were not coded as mathematical modelling. This provides insights into teachers’ misconceptions of mathematical modelling. Implications for teachers and researchers for issues to be considered as the prevalence of online resources increases are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Mathematical modelling
• online curricula
• Teachers Pay Teachers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.