Understanding Prospective Teachers’ Task Design Considerations through the Lens of the Theory of Didactical Situations

Wajeeh Daher,Otman Jaber,Nimer Baya’A

doi:10.3390/math10030417

Abstract

Task design, in general, and task design in a technological environment, is attracting the attention of educational researchers. The present research investigates task design of prospective teachers in the Scratch programming environment. A total of twenty-three female prospective teachers participated in a professional development program. They were in their third academic year majoring in teaching mathematics and computer science in the middle school. The prospective teachers attempted to design mathematics-based programming problems. The present research utilizes the theory of didactical situations in mathematics, specifically the situation types, the paradoxes of the didactical contract and the situation components, to study the task design of the prospective teachers. It does that by focusing on one group of prospective teachers. The research results indicated that the prospective teachers were concerned mainly with the situation of information, situation of reference and situation of action. Doing so, they were concerned with the paradox of the said and the unsaid, the paradox of uncertainty, and the paradox of devolution. In addition, they took care of both algorithmic and creative reasoning. They also took care of students’ devolution, where this devolution was conditioned with following an institutionalization. They were also concerned with giving students autonomy and encouraging decision making regarding the solution of the problem. Furthermore, they planned to enable students’ control over their learning.

Highlights

The present research intends to verify the characteristics of task design by middle-school mathematics prospective teachers
Case study is suitable in our case as the present research is poineer in utilizing the didactical sitution framewrok to analyze the task design of programming problems
Presenting the prospective teachers’ design of problems, we will describe the situation types that they were concerned with, the paradoxes that they attempted to avoid in the problems and the situation components that they discussed

Summary

Introduction

In general, and mathematical task design, in particular, are attracting the attention of researchers as this design could help teachers plan, modify, build and evaluate activities in order to fit their classrooms [1]. This is especially true in times of educational emergencies as the last one that occurred due to COVID 19. The previous argument indicates that it is necessary for teachers’ training colleges to prepare the prospective teachers for task design. The present research intends to verify the characteristics of task design by middle-school mathematics prospective teachers. The prospective teachers designed mathematics-based programming tasks in the Scratch environment. We will try to understand, in the present research, their task in light of the Theory of Didactical Situations in Mathematics (TDSM) and its components

Methods

Results

Conclusion