THE RELATIONSHIP OF MATHEMATICS TEACHERS’ BELIEFS AND
EXPERIENCES ON THE USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM
University of Arizona
GeneH@SunnysideUD.K12.AZ.US
Guidelines from the National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics (NCTM) and other research in mathematics education encourage the
use of technology in mathematics classrooms for teaching and instruction. But research has shown that the belief
structures of classroom teachers do not, at times, coincide with these
teachers’ classroom practices.
This dissertation pilot project attempts to answer important questions relating teachers’ philosophical inclinations of mathematics and their perceptions of the role of technology in the classroom. The project seeks to measure the variation in teachers’ perceptions of the nature and role of mathematics and the variation in their personal use of technology in the classroom. Are their opposing views? What are the characteristics that define them?
The study involved 17 mathematics educators enrolled in a technology post-graduate course. Each of the subjects was given a basic demographics questionnaire, an attitudinal technology survey (ATS), an experiential technology survey (ETS), and a mathematics belief survey (MBS). The MBS results were analyzed for correlation with both the ETS and ATS instruments. Further clarifications of these relationships were analyzed through a pair of structured interviews conducted by this researcher.
Results of this study indicate that a teacher’s perception of the nature and role of mathematics must be taken into account whenever reform efforts involving technology are attempted. Those with Aristotelian tendencies support the use of technology with less reservation than do those with Platonic tendencies.