Brown (2009)

The Teacher-Tool Relationship: Theorizing the Design and Use of Curriculum Materials

• Author: Matthew Brown
• Book: Mathematics Teachers at Work: Connecting Curriculum Materials and Classroom Instruction
• Year: 2009
• Source: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415990103/

Outline of Headings

• Teaching as Design
• Theoretical Background
  • Artifacts can Extend Human Capacities
• Curriculum Materials as Artifacts
• How Curriculum Artifacts Influence Instruction
• How Teachers Interpret and Use Curriculum Artifacts
• How Teaching is Design
• Analyzing Teacher Use of Curriculum Artifacts
• Types of Curriculum Use: Offloading, Adapting, and Improvising
• Facets of the Teacher-Tool Relationship: The Design Capacity for Enactment Framework
  • Applying the Design Capacity Enactment Framework
• Pedagogical Design Capacity
• Design Implications
• The Design of Materials
  • Multiple Points of Access
  • Resource-Centric Material Design
  • Creating Reusable Resources and Supporting Customization
• The Design of Professional Development

Summary

Brown begins this chapter comparing the relationship between teachers and curriculum materials to those of musicians and their music; just as the same song played by different musicians takes on its own character, teachers interpret and adapt curriculum materials in ways that make their practice unique, even if there are similarities across classrooms. Curriculum materials are often used to promote educational reforms and the results of such efforts have been mixed (Ball & Cohen, 1996; Cohen, 1988; Cuban 1992, 1993; Snyder, Bolin, & Zumwalt, 1992), the reasons of which have been attributed to practitioners (Cohen, 1990; Spillane, 1999), policies (Spillane, 1998), and professional development (Putnam & Borko, 2000; Wilson & Berne, 1999). Other studies have focused on how teachers interpret curriculum materials (Ben-Peretz, 1990; Brown, 2002; Brown & Edelson, 2003; Lloyd, 1999; Remillard 2000, 2005; Wiley, 2001) and how curriculum materials might be better designed to meet the need of teachers (Brown, 2002; Brown & Edelson, 2003; Davis & Krajcik, 2005; Davis & Varma, 2008; Schneider & Krajcik, 2002). Brown's purpose in writing this chapter is to describe a theoretical framework for the relationship between curriculum materials and teacher practice. In doing so, Brown conceives of teaching as a design activity in which teachers evaluate their resources and make decisions in an effort to achieve instructional goals. Tensions between teachers (the agent) and their curriculum materials (the tool) build on a well-established body of learning theory (Gibson, 1977; Hutchins, 1996; Norman 1988, 1991; Pea, 1993; Wertsch, 1991, 1998), which Brown uses to highlight three key points:

1. Curriculum materials play an important role in affording and constraining teachers' actions.
2. Teachers notice and use such artifacts differently given their experience, intentions, and abilities.
3. "Teaching by design" is not so much a conscious choice as an inevitable reality (p. 19).

Wartofsky (1973) theorized artifacts as human-created tools that play a prominent role in our survival. Artifacts can be transmitted or preserved across place and time and our progress is inseparable from the artifacts we use (Wertsch, 1998). Artifacts mediate human activity (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1991, 1998) in ways shaped by the artifact's affordances and constraints. Affordances might be attributed to the functional properties of the artifact (Gibson, 1977) or perceptual cues that suggest how they might be used (Norman, 1988). Constraints of artifacts restrict the ways in which we act and what we see as possible (Burke, 1966; Wertsch, 1998).

Norman (1988) suggested that humans often design artifacts to afford and constrain human activities in particular ways. In the case of curriculum, materials are designed to promote certain instructional, assessment, and student practices while discouraging the use of others. Often, curriculum materials allow teachers to engage in practices they could not have done alone, thus representing a shared capacity across teachers and their materials. Artifacts are also not limited to physical materials (Wartofsky, 1973); our cultural and historical ideas and practices also act to shape our activity. Brown enumerates six characteristics of curriculum materials that influence instruction:

1. They are static representations of abstract concepts and dynamic activities — a means for transmitting and producing activity, not the activity itself.
2. They are intended to convey rich ideas and dynamic practices, yet they do so through succinct shorthand that relies heavily on interpretation.
3. They observe a number of culturally shared notational rules, norms, and conventions in their representations — although fewer consistently and conventions in their representations — although fewer consistently used conventions exist for curriculum materials than for sheet music.
4. They may reflect common or existing practices and at the same time aim to shape innovative or new practices.
5. They represent an interface between the knowledge, goals, and values of the author and the user.
6. They require craft in their use; they are inert objects that come alive only through interpretation and use by a practitioner (pp. 21-22).

In addition to the influence of curriculum materials on teachers, Brown notes the importance of understanding the "dynamic and constructive ways" (p. 22) teachers interpret and use curriculum materials (Barab & Luehmann, 2003; Brown, 2002; Davis & Krajcik, 2005; Matese, 2005; Remillard, 2005). Even when curriculum materials are provided, teachers still select materials according to their beliefs, skills, knowledge, and goals (Freeman & Porter, 1989; Tarr, Reys, Reys, Chavez, Shih, & Osterlind, 2008) or resist scripted or otherwise inflexible materials (Cohen, 1990; Remillard, 1992; Wilson, 1990) based on their goals and beliefs (Cohen, 1988, 1990; Lloyd, 1999; Lloyd & Wilson, 1998; Wilson & Goldenberg, 1998). Next, teachers interpret materials in planning and instruction (Ben-Peretz, 1990; Stein, Remillard, & Smith, 2007). Then teachers reconcile those interpretations with their instructional goals (Ben-Peretz, 1990; Remillard, 2005), and accommodate the needs of their students, making continual adjustments and providing feedback (Stein, 1996; Wilson & Lloyd, 2000). Depending on the perceived success of the plan, teachers may add, modify, or omit parts of the curriculum, either due to interest or ability (Remillard, 1992; Tarr, Reys, Reys, Chavez, Shih, & Osterlind, 2008).

This perspective on teachers' curriculum use leads Brown to conclude that teaching is a form of design, a process that "is about crafting something in order to solve a human problem, to change the state of a particular situation from a current condition to a desired one, and to accomplish a goal" (p. 23). Understanding teaching as design highlights the dynamic between teachers and their materials, and Brown provides three constructs for understanding this relationship. The first contrasts offloading, adapting, and improvising and gives us a way to think about the degree to which teachers appropriate instructional materials. Second, Brown describes a framework for examining interactions between teachers and features of their materials. Lastly, he describes pedagogical design capacity, described as a teacher's "ability to perceive and mobilize existing resources in order to craft instructional contexts" (p. 24).

Also

APA

Brown, M. W. (2009). The teacher-tool relationship: Theorizing the design and use of curriculum materials. In J. T. Remillard, B. A. Herbel-Eisenmann, & G. M. Lloyd (Eds.), Mathematics teachers at work: Connecting curriculum materials and classroom instruction (pp. 17–36). New York, NY: Routledge.

BibTeX

@incollection{Brown2009,
address = {New York, NY},
author = {Brown, Matthew W.},
booktitle = {Mathematics teachers at work: Connecting curriculum materials and classroom instruction},
chapter = {2},
editor = {Remillard, Janine T. and Herbel-Eisenmann, Beth A. and Lloyd, Gwendolyn M.},
pages = {17--36},
publisher = {Routledge},
title = {{The teacher-tool relationship: Theorizing the design and use of curriculum materials}},
year = {2009}
}