Do Authors of Online Electronic Materials for Teaching Mathematics use Their Potential to use Non‑Stereotypical Cultural Settings?

Abstract

The paper focuses on the cultural content of online electronic materials developed primarily by Czech in‑service teachers of mathematics for smartboards. The author presents an analysis of these materials with a focus on the cultural settings of word problems they contain. The paper builds on a poster presented on ECEL 2015 conference and a paper presented on ECEL 2016 conference. The question the author asks is how innovative electronic materials are as far as their cultural, non‑mathematical content is concerned. Are these materials a mere conversion of problems from traditional hardcopy textbooks or have its authors gone further, introducing new motives, images and realities? Do they use the potential of the online environment that allows easy updates (unlike hardcopy textbooks that are used without any change for years, even decades)? The author builds on her research in the area of non‑mathematical content of mathematics textbooks (Moraová, 2013) and of problems posed by teacher trainees (Moraová, 2014). The here presented research combines qualitative and quantitative approaches. The author analyses one hundred and seventeen online activities from the website www.veskole.cz. Word problems are classified according to their cultural content and the most frequent images are described and commented upon. The findings of this study are of interest to in‑service mathematics teachers planning to develop an online teaching unit, mathematics educators but also policy makers as not much attention is paid to the cultural contents of mathematics teaching materials.