Teacher’s representational fluency in a context of technology use

Abstract

This study focuses on teacher’s Knowledge for Teaching Mathematics with Technology (KTMT), paying a special attention to teacher’s representational fluency. It intends to characterize how the teacher uses and integrates the different representations provided by the graphing calculator on the process of teaching and learning functions at the high school level. Specifically, it intends to understand the balance established between the use of the different representations, and the way these representations are articulated. The study adopts a qualitative approach undertaking one teacher case study. Data were collected for two school years, at 10th and 11th grades, and included class observation, semi-structured interviews and documents gathering. Data analysis was mainly descriptive and interpretative in nature, considering the problem under study. The conclusions reached reveal an active use of the graphical and algebraic representations and a scarce use of the tabular representation. The lack of balance on the use of representations also includes the work within a representation. In this case, the graphical representation is the only one that was explored. The conclusions also indicate a flexible articulation between the two representations usually used. It was possible to identify different patterns on the use of the representations and a frequent use of an interactive approach, marked by repeated alternations between representations. Globally, this study emphasizes teacher’s KTMT and raises questions about the impact of technology on teacher’s representational fluency and about the difference between a numerical and a tabular representation.