Kenneth Ruthven

Teacher Perspectives on Integrating ICT into Subject Teaching: Commitment, Constraints, Caution, and Change

This paper examines how secondary teachers of the core subjects of English, mathematics, and science have begun to integrate information and communication technology (ICT) into mainstream classroom practice in English schools. It draws on an analysis of 18 focus‐group interviews with subject departments in these fields. Evident commitment to incorporating ICT was tempered by a cautious, critical approach, and by the influence of external constraints. Teacher accounts emphasized both the use of ICT to enhance and extend existing classroom practice, and change in terms of emerging forms of activity which complemented or modified practice. A gradual process of pedagogical evolution was apparent; teachers were developing and trialling new strategies specifically for mediating ICT‐supported learning. In particular, these overcame the potentially obstructive role of some forms of ICT by focusing pupils’ attention onto underlying learning objectives.

Pedagogical strategies for using the interactive whiteboard to foster learner participation in school science

This study aimed to extend the currently limited understanding of how pedagogy is developing in response to the influx of interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in schools in the UK and some other countries. A case study approach was employed to investigate how experienced classroom practitioners are beginning to harness the functionality of this technology to support learning in science. The methods included focus group interviews with four secondary science departments, plus lesson observations and interviews with two teachers and their pupils. We analysed the data from a sociocultural perspective on learning, focusing on the strategies that teachers used to exploit the dynamic, manipulable objects of joint reference and annotative tools afforded by the technology to foster the cognitive, social and physical participation of learners in whole‐class activity. The case study teachers demonstrated contrasting approaches to designing and supporting activity in which pupils shared, evaluated and developed ideas using the IWB. Pupil manipulation of objects on the IWB was deemed desirable but—along with pedagogical interactivity—was constrained by systemic school and subject cultures, curricular and assessment frameworks. Observed and potential opportunities for active cognitive and social participation are outlined.

Pedagogical approaches for technology-integrated science teaching☆

The two separate projects described have examined how teachers exploit computer-based technologies in supporting learning of science at secondary level. This paper examines how pedagogical approaches associated with these technological tools are adapted to both the cognitive and structuring resources available in the classroom setting. Four teachers participated in the first study, undertaken as part of the InterActive Education project in Bristol; all of them used multimedia simulations in their lessons. The second study presented was part of the wider SET-IT project in Cambridge; 11 teachers in eight schools were observed using multimedia simulations, data logging tools and interactive whiteboards. Teachers were interviewed in all cases to elicit their pedagogical thinking about their classroom use of ICT. The findings suggest that teachers are moving away from only using ‘real’ experiments in their practice. They are exploring the use of technologies to encourage students to engage in “What If” explorations where the outcomes of ‘virtual’ experiments can be immediately accessed, for example through using a simulation. However, this type of activity can serve just as a mechanism for revealing – and indeed reinforcing – students’ informal conceptions if cognitive conflict is not generated or remains unresolved. The teachers in our studies used simulations, data logging, projected animations and other dynamic digital resources as tools to encourage and support prediction and to demonstrate scientific concepts and physical processes – thereby ‘bridging the gap’ between scientific and informal knowledge. They also integrated technology carefully with other practical activities so as to support stepwise knowledge building, consolidation and application. Research of this kind has design implications for both curriculum-related activities and emerging computer-based learning technologies, in terms of helping us to understand how teachers capitalise upon the technology available in supporting students to construct links between scientific theory and empirical evidence.

Mathematical Knowledge in Teaching

Cumulative research within a number of traditions has shown that effective teaching calls for distinctive, identifiable forms of subject-related knowledge and thinking, yet the significance and complexity of such knowledge is not well represented in professional debate and policymaking. This is a particularly pressing issue within mathematics education, given world-wide aspirations to improve quality of teaching and learning in the face of widespread difficulties in recruiting teachers who are conventionally well-qualified in mathematics and confident in the subject. This book, the outcome of two years of collaborative effort, brings together a team of experts in the field of mathematics teacher knowledge to produce an authoritative, ‘state of the art’ exposition and critical commentary on this important and topical domain, including reports of original research in the field. It offers constructive and helpful ways of conceptualising mathematics teacher knowledge in its cultural context, as well as a range of theorised tools to support its improvement.

The influence of graphic calculator use on translation from graphic to symbolic forms

This article reports a study comparing the mathematical performance of upper secondary school mathematics students for whom a graphic calculator is a standard mathematical tool, with that of students of similar background without regular access to graphing technology. Students were tested on two types of item: symbolisation items, calling for an algebraic description of some cartesian graph; and interpretation items, calling for the extraction of information from some verbally contextualised graph. The findings illustrate that, under appropriate conditions, access to information technology can have an important influence both on the mathematical approaches employed by students and on their mathematical attainment. On the symbolisation items, use of graphic calculators was associated not only with markedly superior attainment by all students, but with greatly enhanced relative attainment on the part of female students.

Design Tools in Didactical Research: Instrumenting the Epistemological and Cognitive Aspects of the Design of Teaching Sequences:

European programs of design research have developed distinctive types of apparatus to structure and support the process of didactical design. This article illustrates how intermediate frameworks and design tools serve to mediate the contribution of grand theories to the design process, by coordinating and contextualizing theoretical insights on the epistemological and cognitive dimensions of a knowledge domain for the particular purposes of designing teaching sequences and studying their operation. The development and analysis of intermediate frameworks and design tools of these types provides a promising approach to establishing a public repertoire of theoretically informed apparatus for didactical design.

Proof Practices and Constructs of Advanced Mathematics Students

Abstract Proof has traditionally been seen as an important aspect of the advanced mathematics curriculum. The study reported here examines the proof practices and constructs of a group of students educated within a ‘post‐Cockcroft’ mathematics curriculum. It finds that although, in the spirit of the reformed curriculum, students are actively involved in developing mathematical ideas, this is within a restricted mode in which ideas of enquiry have become largely instrumentalised. In particular, validation is primarily and predominantly empirical, and there is little concern for illumination and systematisation.

Situated Expertise in Integrating Use of Multimedia Simulation into Secondary Science Teaching

This study explored teachers’ pedagogical strategies for using multimedia simulation to structure and support secondary science teaching. Expertise was investigated across a range of classroom settings to analyse how specialist knowledge is situated within and adapted to the teaching and learning context. Analysis of data arising from 10 lesson observations and post‐lesson interviews with five teachers and their pupils highlighted significant variation in pedagogical approaches shaping simulation use in three topic areas. Two contrasting case studies involving a “terminal velocity” simulation exemplify this: one was characterized by some “dialogic” whole class interaction and collaborative testing of pupils’ own ideas; the other by a more typical, more authoritative, discourse with pupil pairs. Over‐structuring of tasks and curricular constraints meant that the rhetoric in the literature and teachers’ aspirations concerning pupil experimentation balanced with structured tasks were not borne out. Implications for mode of use and the design of technology‐integrated activity are discussed.

Constructions of dynamic geometry: A study of the interpretative flexibility of educational software in classroom practice

The idea of ‘interpretative flexibility’ underpins new approaches to studying technological artefacts and curricular resources in use. This paper opens by reviewing – in this light – the evolving design of dynamic geometry, its pioneering use within classroom projects, and early sketches of its mainstream use in ordinary classrooms. After examining curricular context and its instrumental dimension, the paper then reports a study of teacher constructions of dynamic geometry in classroom practice, conducted in professionally well-regarded mathematics departments in English secondary schools. From departmental focus-group interviews, four teacher-nominated examples of successful practice were selected for study in depth through lesson observation and post-lesson interview. Iterative thematic analysis was employed, first to establish a narrative outline of each case, and then the ideas and issues salient across cases. The study illustrates the interpretative flexibility surrounding the emergent use of dynamic geometry. It found important differences in practical elaboration of the widespread idea of employing dynamic geometry to support guided discovery. The process of evaluating the costs and benefits of student software use was influenced by the extent to which such use was seen as providing experience of a mathematical reference model, and more fundamentally as promoting mathematically disciplined interaction. Approaches to handling apparent mathematical anomalies of software operation depended on whether these were seen as providing opportunities to develop students’ mathematical understanding, in line with a more fundamental pedagogical orientation towards supporting learning through analysis of mathematical discrepancies. Such variation was associated with differences in positioning dynamic geometry in relation to curricular norms and in privileging a mathematical register for framing figural properties. Across all cases, however, incorporating dynamic manipulation into mathematical discourse moved implicitly beyond established norms when dragging was used to focus attention on continuous dynamic variation, rather than being treated as an efficient means of generating multiple static figures. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Ability Stereotyping in Mathematics.

Ability is a concept central to the current practice of mathematics teaching. However, the widespread view of mathematics learning as an ordered progression through a hierarchy of knowledge and skill, mediated by the stable cognitive capability of the individual pupil, can be sustained only as a gross global model, and is of limited value in describing and understanding the particular cognitive capabilities of individual pupils in order to plan, promote and evaluate their learning. In effect, individual pupils, and groups of pupils, are subject to ability stereotyping; characterisation in terms of a summary global judgement of cognitive capability, associated with overgeneralised and stereotyped expectations of mathematical behaviour, and stereotyped perceptions of an appropriate mathematics curriculum.