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Enhancing Lesson Planning and Quality of Classroom Life: A Study of Mathematics Student Teachers’ Use of Technology

Fraser, V., Garofalo, J., and Juersivich. N. (2009)

One of the primary functions of educators is classroom instruction. Quality instruction

begins with a well-designed plan for implementation. Teachers, through conscious, deliberate

decisions involving teaching methodologies and their knowledge of students, shape the scope

and sequence of instructional content, the characteristics of teacher-student interactions, and the

nature of the students’ personal and cognitive growth (Panasuk & Sullivan, 1998). Attention to

the specifics of lessons can increase teachers’ content understanding (Clark & Dunn, 1991), as

well as students’ time-on-task and engagement in their learning (Hall & Smith, 2006). Teachers

therefore exert substantial influence on student learning as they align the educational content,

focus, and strategies to utilize in the classroom (Little, 2003).

Teachers’ Duties and Responsibilities

Besides planning for instruction, teachers perform many additional jobs. They grade

student products, maintain records of attendance and student needs, communicate with parents,

attend meetings, and participate in district in-service workshops (Firestone & Bader, 1991). They

administer standardized tests and document student attainment of standards (Tye & O’Brien,

2002). Teachers are additionally charged with administrative chores, such as monitoring hallway

activity between classes, conferencing with parents and counselors about student issues,

performing classroom janitorial services, and copying instructional materials (Allen, 2007).

Further duties encompass committee work on curricula, textbook adoption, school accreditation,

school improvement, and community relations (Wolf, 2002). Some teachers engage in even more

activities such as coaching, sponsoring clubs, and mentoring of students or other teachers.

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Considering the extensive aforementioned roles and responsibilities of secondary

teachers, it is not surprising that the National Education Association reported that teachers work

an average of 52 hours a week (NEA, 2003). The time required to complete their work is now

encroaching on teachers’ home life (Wolf, 2002; Allen, 2007). Turley (2006) comments,

“Essentially, there is more work to do, but available time remains unchanged.” (p. 438).

Consequently, teachers are reporting that these ever-increasing functions limit their ability to

develop intricate lessons that enhance student understanding (Allen, 2007; Certo & Fox, 2002;

Firestone & Bader, 1991). Fortunately, as Taylor (2004) claims, “current advances in technology

offer welcome relief from laborious tasks that decrease the amount of time teachers have to focus

on instruction.” (p.46). For example, teachers utilize technology to complete administrative

tasks, compute grades, and assess student achievement levels (Clark, 2000; Taylor, 2004;

Wepner & Tao, 2002).

Mathematics Lessons and the Potential Benefits of Technology

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM, 2000) claims that, “In

planning individual lessons, teachers should strive to organize the mathematics so that

fundamental ideas form an integrated whole. Big ideas encountered in a variety of contexts

should be established carefully, with important elements such as terminology, definitions,

notation, concepts, and skills emerging in the process.” (p. 15). Unfortunately, studies, such as

the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, indicate that planning and teaching

practices in too many mathematics classrooms do not sufficiently address conceptual and

contextual aspects of mathematical topics (Hiebert et al, 2003; Hiebert & Stigler, 2000; Stigler &

Hiebert, 1997, 1999). Typical lessons consist of homework review, followed by several sample

exercises, then by individual practice tasks from worksheets and textbooks (Little, 2003; Panasuk

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& Todd, 2005). This format often overemphasizes procedures and does not encourage conceptual

understanding. To address this imbalance, mathematics lesson plans should incorporate logical

arrangements of concepts, involving multiple representations and realistic situations, in which

meaningful connections are drawn between ideas (NCTM 2000; Panasuk, Stone, & Todd, 2002).

Appropriate use of some types of technology can promote deeper understanding of mathematics,

since it can empower students to discover, explore, and conjecture about mathematical ideas; that

is, it can allow students to act and think like mathematicians (Borwein & Bailey, 2003; Heid,

1997; Zbiek, Heid, Blume,& Dick, 2007). Fortunately, technology can also facilitate teachers’

lesson planning (Clark, 2000). For example, Dils (2004) developed an “Interactive Lesson

Planner” to scaffold pre-service teachers planning of constructivist lessons, by providing

prompts, pedagogical suggestions and guidelines, and links to various resources, and found the

use of this tool helped PSTs focus attention on important aspects of planning and organizing

lesson components. Furthermore, teachers employ different technologies when planning detailed

lessons that incorporate various software resources (Kersaint, 2007; Mandell, Sorge, & Russell,

2002).

Preparing Student Teachers to Use Technology

Thomas, Larson, Clift, & Levin (1996) assert, “student teachers are more apt to embrace,

model, use, and incorporate technology into their instructional planning and classroom

organization.” (p. 7). However, student teachers have difficulties with managing pupil needs and

discipline, formulating lesson presentation and evaluation, relating with pupils and other

teachers, and regulating time (McCann & Johannessen, 2004). Moreover, these novice teachers

suffer anxiety due to cognitive overload when trying to control excessive external and internal

stimuli that short term or working memory cannot handle (Feldon, 2007). Despite these

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challenges, we have observed that appropriate use of technology can support pre-service

teachers’ classroom practices.

Our primary goal in preparing pre-service secondary mathematics teachers (PSMTs) to

use technology is for them to take advantage of the affordances of technology to enhance their

pupils’ learning of mathematics in ways that are not possible without the technology. Our

PSMTs complete a five-year program, which leads to a BA in mathematics and an MT in

secondary education. The PSMTs student teach in the fall of their fifth year. Prior to student

teaching, all PSMTs spend two semesters in a technology-rich mathematics pedagogy course.

This course focuses on problem solving, conceptual and procedural knowledge, sense-making

and constructivism, mathematical applications, and the NCTM (2000) Principles and Standards.

The course integrates a variety of software (e.g., Geometer’s Sketchpad, Excel, TI SmartView)

and other technologies (e.g., graphing calculators and probeware) in meaningful mathematical

activities and emphasizes using technology to generate multiple representations (Garofalo,

Shockey, Harper, & Drier, 2000). The PSMTs use these technologies to explore mathematical

problems and concepts in class and for homework, and subsequently reflect on these

experiences. They use these technologies with a SMART Board and SMART Notebook in mini-

lessons they teach in the course and in field experiences in local high schools (sometimes

without a SMART Board). We provide feedback on pedagogy and technology use to the PSMTs

following each lesson.

Purpose

In this paper, we report on (1) how pre-service secondary mathematics teachers (PSMTs),

who had experiences doing and practice-teaching mathematics in a technology-rich environment,

subsequently used this technology when planning lessons and (2) how the use of technology

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enhanced other aspects of the PSMTs’ quality of classroom life. These results emerged in the

process of studying how the PSMTs’ integrated technology into their student teaching for the

purpose of increasing their pupils’ mathematics understanding.

Methodology

Participants

Two cohorts of PSMTs participated in this study. The first cohort consisted of 10 PSMTs,

who student taught in the fall of 2005. The second cohort consisted of six PSMTs, who student

taught in the fall of 2006.

Student Teaching Researchers have recognized that simply using technology to learn mathematics will not

guarantee that teachers will use it in their teaching, for many factors confound the initiative to

use it (Olive & Leatham, 2000). PSMTs need access to equipment along with pedagogical and

technical support. To enable our PSMTs to implement the technologies they learned, we provide

them with a laptop, a SMART Board, a projector, and software to use during their student

teaching. PSMTs are observed and debriefed bi-weekly and meet weekly as a group to discuss

teaching and technology issues. Furthermore, during these seminars, PSMTs share their

technology files and explain how they used them in their classrooms.

Data Collection

Consistent with the purposes of this study, the data collection was both descriptive and

qualitative. Data were collected through observations, interviews, and artifacts.

Observations and debriefings. During student teaching, we observed a minimum of five

90-minute teaching episodes per PSMT. Observers took field notes on lesson contexts, student

engagement, opportunities provided for meaningful learning, appropriate technology use,

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classroom management, and the accuracy of the mathematical content presented. Following each

observation, a debriefing session was held. The PSMTs discussed their planning processes,

whether or not their classroom practices and actions were successful or needed improvement,

and their rationales for their use of technology. We provided constructive feedback during these

conversations. These debriefings were audio recorded and transcribed.

Interviews. Prior to teaching in their student teacher placements, we interviewed the

PSMTs concerning their views on planning, what constitutes effective mathematics teaching,

potential benefits of technology, and their primary motives for using technology. After student

teaching, we asked similar questions and had the PSMTs provide examples from their

placements. These interviews were audio recorded and transcribed.

Reflective journal. During their student teaching, the PSMTs kept an electronic

technology reflective journal in which they wrote weekly about any thoughts or issues they had

with the technology in their placement. They posted the journal entries to a secure website.

Teaching artifacts. Throughout their placement, PSMTs saved technology files and

lesson plans on a common share-drive to which all had access. Later in the semester during the

group seminar, PSMTs demonstrated their best lessons and technology files and gave a synopsis

of how they incorporated technology into their lesson. Some files were also shared during

weekly seminars.

Data Analysis

We adopted Erickson’s analytic induction (1986) to analyze the data. In the first phase of

data analysis, we generated assertions by carefully searching through the data corpus. The

second phase established an evidentiary warrant for each assertion by performing “a systematic

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search of the entire data corpus, looking for disconfirming and confirming evidence, keeping in

mind the need to reframe the assertions as the analysis proceeds.” (p. 146).

We imported the typed reflective journals and transcribed interviews into NVivo7 and

open-coded chunks of information using descriptive, conceptual, and in vivo codes. Hence, data

collection and initial coding took a grounded theory approach. The software gave us the

opportunity to apply multiple codes to the same selection of information. After open coding, we

noticed the emergence of two main codes: Representation and Quality of Life. This paper focuses

solely on the latter, Quality of Life.

We then constructed relationships among these two main codes and other codes in a

hierarchical fashion. During this process, codes were refined by meticulous defining and

renaming, through memo-ing and writing about the meanings of codes. Under Quality of Life,

themes emerged through readings and re-readings of the information within nodes and sub-nodes

of Quality of Life across and among participants. By using NVivo7‘s query attributes, these

themes were revised and eventually became four assertions. A systematic search for confirming

and disconfirming evidence authenticated these assertions.

Results

We summarize our findings through four assertions. Assertion 1 describes the

organizational aspects of developing a lesson plan. By capitalizing on technological capabilities,

the PSMTs created detailed lessons that incorporated a variety of resources. Assertion 2 shows

that the technology helped the PSMTs refocus their teaching when they were diverted from their

plans, thereby decreasing their nervousness while teaching. Assertion 3 reveals the adaptability

of digital lesson files, which provided the sequencing flexibility necessary for thoughtful

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Comment [LL1]: This is correct. Please do not change.

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instruction. Assertion 4 illustrates the manner in which technology allowed the PSMTs to reuse

and share already developed lessons during all stages of their lesson planning and teaching.

Assertion 1: The provided technology encouraged PSMTs to prepare comprehensive lesson

plans, organized through a storyboarding process, by easily permitting the incorporation of a

variety of resources into one file or one folder.

When commenting on how technology aided their planning, all of the PSMTs gave

responses similar to that given by K1 (K was a PSMT in cohort 1), “well it’s an easy way to plan

and this is a convenient way to organize a lesson.” (K1, Exit Interview). Their statements and

teaching artifacts indicated they employed PowerPoint and SMART Notebook for the

storyboarding of lessons when planning. C2 noted this practice in her reflective journal:

The SMART Board and the SMART Notebook are great tools for organizing a

lesson and laying out a lesson prior to teaching...When I am planning lessons, I use the

SMART Board to help organize my lesson and order it appropriately. (C2, Reflective

Journal)

Storyboarded lesson files consisted of organized slides that contained a variety of examples,

figures, digital images, definitions, graphs, videos, and interactive files, sequenced for a

particular concept. These slides represented their plan of instruction.

At times, the PSMTs inserted images, diagrams, and text excerpts into their files by

copying and pasting them into a slide. For example, L2 pasted digital photos into a lesson file

addressing the concept of slope with real situations (see Figure 1a). He remarked, “I got a digital

camera for my birthday and used some digital photographs of roofs to illustrate the concept of

slope and steepness of slope. That worked well because it was something the students could

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relate to.” (L2, Reflective Journal). Another PSMT, K1 copied and pasted theorems and

problems from the digital version of the textbook into his lessons file not only to place them into

the sequence of the lesson but also to display the exact wordings, diagrams, and notations from

the textbook (see Figure 1b).

Figure 1a: Digital photo of roof Figure 1b: Congruent triangle task from textbook Links to various files and websites were also incorporated in the SMART Notebook file

or PowerPoint file. The PSMTs tapped on the links and the corresponding screens appeared.

A2’s lesson, involving the laws of sines and cosines, exhibited such use. A2 inserted a clip of the

TV show “Lost” into her SMART Notebook lesson file. In the video, the pilot of a downed plane

headed from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles, gave information to other surviving

crewmembers about the plane’s travel time and direction prior to crashing. The pupils’ job was

to locate the survivors by reconstructing their irregular flight path using the information

presented in the clip. A2 placed a link to a Geometer’s Sketchpad file that contained a map of the

situation. She further included embedded links to internet sites (e.g., Expedia and Boeing) that

provided real information on the types of planes, and their speeds, that fly this route for pupils to

use in their calculations (see Figure 2). The pupils then used this information and previously

learned trigonometry to establish the location of the survivors.

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Figure 2: Geometer’s Sketchpad map and airplane Internet links The PSMTs also accessed files and web pages by opening and minimizing the screen.

The teacher tapped on the tabs positioned at the bottom of the SMART Board to open the

sources when needed during the lesson. E1 explained this use in her exit interview:

I love the idea of having everything at your fingertips. So then if I know that I want to

switch from notebook, where I have notes for them and switch to a worksheet that they’re

working on and switch to a website I want to show them and then go over to Excel to do

something, that I know that could do all that. (E1, Exit Interview)

Two examples of programs accessed through tapping on tabs are H1’s use of a Geometer’s

Sketchpad animation illustrating the relationship between the unit circle and the sine wave and

C2’s use of an interactive Calculus in Motion file demonstrating the optimization of the volume

of a box (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Geometer’s Sketchpad and Calculus in Motion files

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Assertion 2: The storyboarded lesson files, used in conjunction with SMART Boards, helped

PSMTs maintain their lesson plan focus, often reducing their anxiety.

One particular concern for the PSMTs was their ability to function effectively in front of

students. Like many other beginning teachers, these PSMTs considered the enactment of planned

instructional activities, while simultaneously managing classroom environments, a challenge.

They viewed technology as an important tool for coping with these issues. The PSMTs noted that

the storyboarded lesson files, projected on the SMART Board, helped them remember what they

had planned to teach and in what sequence. As C2 stated, “Organizing my lesson using SMART

Notebook helps keep me on task, and teaching the lesson the way I planned it.” (C2, Reflective

Journal). Similarly, M2 and E1 said respectively, “I find myself like jumping all over the place,

all that can be simplified [by technology] and the students will be less confused.” (M2, Pre-

Conference), and “[the technology] keeps the instructor on task and more organized.’ (E1,

Technology Reflection). E2 added “it would keep me from, you know, not losing my place, or it

would keep me on track and kind of know what’s coming up next.” (E2, Exit Interview).

The PSMTs used the storyboarded lesson files to guide the course of their lesson and this

allowed them to refocus their attention if they got off track. As A2 acknowledged, “I prepared

PowerPoint slides or Notebook slides to help guide the direction of my instruction, which proved

helpful when we got sidetracked.” (A2, Reflective Journal). The PSMTs did not need to fret

about keeping track of their lesson sequence because they always had them “at their fingertips”

by means of thumbnail slides. As K1 remarked:

But using the technology I could just plan my lesson out with technology and

I would have it there so I wouldn’t have to write anything out on the board and

I wouldn’t have to kind of worry which example I was supposed to be doing with

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them (K1, Exit interview).

If they were distracted or lost their flow during instruction, they could refocus their teaching by

tapping on the next thumbnail at any time.

The PSMTs recounted that they found many aspects of instructional delivery daunting

and tricky to manage and confided that use of this technology helped soothe their apprehensions.

A2 stated, “It’s just nice to know that I have something that if I forget where I’m going. I can see

that this is next…I anticipate too much sometimes and I freak out, so it helps

me stay on track.” (A2, Pre-Conference). E2 commented, “My lessons go a lot more smoothly

when I have something to work with… I feel more comfortable up in front of the class when I

have the technology there, as opposed to just the chalkboard. (E2, Pre-Conference). Others

talked about the calming influence of having technology. C2 noted, “With so many distractions,

anything that can help organize a lesson so that it runs like a well-oiled machine once it begins is

essential in calming a nervous new teacher’s nerves when teaching.” (C2, Reflective Journal).

M2 agreed with this, stating “It would be more calming and I can just concentrate more on what

I want to ask questions about.” (M2, Pre-Conference).

Assertion 3: The digital lesson files, implemented with SMART Boards, promoted sequencing

flexibility in PSMTs’ teaching.

The PSMTs reported that the SMART technology allowed them to go back or move

ahead to any slide at any moment in the lesson when needed. A2 explained this capacity:

I definitely ran into situations where we would be going through a problem

and they’re like, ‘Wait, I don’t understand why we did that.’ It would be really

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easy to go back and see we did the same thing here and this was why. Or if they were

flying through something, I would be able to move faster or skip extra problems that I

had inserted there (A2, Exit Interview).

When some pupils required checks in understanding, she was able to go back and re-address

concepts. This capability was also noted by D1 who said, “it allows me to easily reference

previously taught material.” (D1 Exit Interview), and by E1 who added, “it was helpful because

you can save the pages and you could, if you still had problems, you could go back for a review,

you could back things up.” (E1, Final Interview). However, when pupils were showing

comprehension, PSMTs moved forward to the next desired slide by simply tapping on its

thumbnail. This ability to move effortlessly between different slides in their lesson files allowed

them to adjust their instruction to accommodate student questions and needs. L2 stated, “there is

no erasing, I can always flip back and forth between different pages of notes.” (L2, Technology

Reflection). This is not as easy to do on a chalkboard. D2 explained:

I like how everything can be saved on Notebook, so I am not erasing things I wrote

on the board previously. A calculus student had a question about something we

talked about earlier in the class and luckily I could just go back to the slide and look

at what I had written down. I am sure if I was using a chalkboard that I would have

erased those notes. (D2, Exit Interview)

L2 added “if you’re writing on a chalkboard or something, that’s gone. But with SMART Board

writing, just click on a slide, find it, and go from there.” (L2, Pre-conference).

The SMART Board technologies also provided the PSMTs the capacity to insert

additional material into digital lesson files when deemed necessary. A2 recalled one such

situation:

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I was teaching quadratics, quadratic functions and they weren’t proficient with

graphing parabolas. I inserted more examples on that and showing the graph

and table on the same screen, at the same time to show them, to have them get

more practice with that. (A2, Exit Interview)

She detected some students were having difficulties with the topic so she added examples on the

SMART Board by hitting the extend page command at the bottom of an existing page. She also

inserted a new slide, which provided a blank page on which to write additional material. These

additions to the lesson file were then saved for subsequent periods.

Assertion 4: Due to their digital nature, the readily accessible lesson files and folders created by

the PSMTs fostered the reusing and sharing of complete lessons.

The PSMTs realized they could reuse their developed materials. Since some of the

PSMTs taught more than one section of a course, they contended that having the electronic

access and the ability to reuse the same prepared materials in every class was most advantageous.

C2 expressed this sentiment very early in her student teaching experience:

It helps a lot to have it prepared. So like a Do Now, it takes time to write up on the

board, to write your function, to draw your graph, to make it look good, put it to scale,

label your points. It takes a lot of time to do that, especially when you switch one

subject, different subject, different subject back. You really don’t want to have to

recreate it. (C2, Pre-conference)

Another PSMT, M1 talked about her use of the calculator in multiple classes. She was solving

systems of three linear equations in her algebra classes using matrices. She performed the steps

on a calculator emulator and saved these in a file (see Figure 4). This file was then used for each

class. She related, “The big thing was not having to go through and enter all of the numbers over

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and over again. With three sections of the same class, I really enjoyed the liberty of having

everything preset.” (M1, Reflective Journal).

Figure 4. Preset calculator matrices file The PSMTs commented their lesson files could be reused in subsequent teaching, either

as is, or with revision. Technology was viewed by the PSMTs as an integral component in this

modification. C2 wrote:

Because the lesson is digital, re-ordering or correcting aspects of the lesson is

easy and not very time consuming. The ease of putting comments in the lesson

for future reference is also an advantage. A second advantage is being able to

easily update and adjust lessons accordingly to how students responded and to

annotate for other teachers to use. Adding slides, as well as reordering slides to

accommodate different classes is quick and efficient. All of these advantages

deal with the edit-ability of digital media. (C2, Reflective Journal).

K1 further noted that previously developed electronic material was easier to locate for future

reuse. K1 remarked, “If the subject is taught again, the files will not be stuffed away in the back

of a file cabinet. They will be stored digitally, ready for action.” (K1, Reflective Journal).

The PSMTs thus found that the electronic files were less bulky and more accessible for

the teacher to share with others. A2 commented, “I like having it always accessible. It’s not on a

piece of paper where or I have to make a transparency of it. It’s just there. I can use it in different

computers. So that makes my life easier.” (A2, Exit Interview). As she moved from room to

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room, her materials were always with her or she located them on any networked computer in the

school. L2 discovered that he could use this network capability in his school to make his pre-

made files available to his students. He explained, “To do this activity I had to put my file onto

the student’s shared server, which proved to be fairly easy after first encountering some

difficulty. I simply created my own unrestricted folder and that solved the problem.” (L2,

Reflective Journal). Thus, they could easily load the needed files on their classroom set of

laptops and complete the lesson activity. The PSMTs additionally shared their created lessons

with each other. H1 commented on this in his final interview:

One thing I like about it (technology) was that it could easily do collaborative sort

of planning. I mean one of things I liked about it because of the electronic file of

notes on the board, if somebody got really great stuff you know you’re not reinventing

the wheel…It saves tons of time and again it sort of like teachers that have collaboration

of different teachers on a particular subject, that’s helpful. (H1, Exit Interview)

The PSMTs also used their digital storyboarded lesson files when catching up pupils on

material missed due to absenteeism. They made comments such as:

Um it makes it easy to save your lesson so you can print it for the kids who weren’t

there, which was really helpful. Especially in algebra because at any given day you

have about 6 kids absent. So it made it easy to catch them up or at least give them the

material for them to try to catch up. (C2, Exit Interview)

If a kid’s not there I can have the SMART Notebook file or the PowerPoint file and

if they want to come during lunch and just have that to go through on a laptop or

whatever instead of having them try to do bookwork on their own. It’s a nice way to

catch, keep students caught up. (A2, Exit Interview)

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The PSMTs were able to give their pupils needed information that was missed using the

capabilities of the technology. This minimized the amount of extra work required of the PSMTs

to perform this teacher responsibility.

Discussion

This study illustrates how the use of technology enhanced PSMTs’ quality of classroom

life by facilitating their lesson planning, helping them stay on track, reducing their stress, and

making it easy to adjust, modify, reuse and share their lessons. The PSMTs found the inherent

capabilities of the technology aided their development of comprehensive lesson plans. They

arranged their ideas by constructing and storyboarding a collection of individual slides that

contained instructional resources and constituted the structure of their lesson. This is similar to a

lesson script, which Leleu-Merviel, Labour, Verclytte, and Vieville (2002) characterize as “a

concrete translation of a teacher’s mental representation of a given lesson” (p. 12). It is important

to note that the PSMTs used the software for storyboarding almost spontaneously, without any

prompting from us. The PSMTs did watch us use a projector in the secondary pedagogy course,

but our lessons were not storyboarded. However, when teaching mini-lessons in the course, they

all brought in their prepared lessons on a thumb drive, without any such direction from us. On

their own, they recognized the advantages of doing so. These capabilities resulted in the SMART

Board being their preferred pedagogical medium.

The PSMTs were motivated to create these digital storyboarded lesson files for they

recognized that these files helped them organize information and structure the presentation of

material. Moreover, they indicated they did not mind the additional effort needed to construct

lessons in this manner. Their journals and interviews contained similar statements to that of E2,

“I have found that planning lessons using technology does require a lot more preparation time,

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which of course, we don’t always have. But I do think it is worth it.” (E2, Reflective Journal).

The literature reflects this perspective. Teachers are willing to spend extra time on preparation if

they feel it will increase student learning (Tye & O’Brien, 2002), as they get the most

satisfaction in their interactions with students in the classroom and observing intellectual growth

(Brunetti, 2001). Fortunately, the time that was required to create these lesson files decreased as

the semester progressed. C2 explained:

Ah well it took less time as we went on or I just spent less time on it. I think it gets

easier the more you do it and you figure out how detailed the presentation has to be,

once you know what kind of presentation you want to have. Like how much

manipulation you want to have, how much clicking, and dragging. It gets a lot easier

so it doesn’t take as long. (C2, Exit Interview)

Disruptions to learning time that interfere with the flow and continuity of the classroom

and impede upon the ability of teachers to adhere to the intended instructional pacing are

commonplace (Hong, 2001; Tye & O’Brien, 2002). The PSMTs found that having their

storyboarded lessons at their fingertips aided them in staying focused on their plan or redirected

their attention back to the plan if they were sidetracked. This contributed to a reduction in their

anxiety.

During instruction, the PSMTs toggled back to previous material (which was not erased,

as is the case when using chalkboards) or moved ahead to other examples to facilitate student

conceptual understanding. They also modified their intended plans by adding more or different

tasks or by deleting unnecessary material. This allowed them to evaluate constantly the

effectiveness of their lessons. The technology facilitated the PSMTs’ ability to perform desired

adjustments to their pre-planned script in order to clarify student misunderstanding.

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Teachers have many duties to perform in any given day. The PSMTs found that the

technology made the completion of some of their responsibilities more palatable. Since their

lessons were electronically generated, changes to these files were easily executed. This

eliminated the necessity for re-creating content information and allowed the PSMTs to reuse

these lesson plans in multiple sections of teaching. These files would furthermore be available to

them for future use. Technology also made the accessibility and thus sharing of created files with

students and other colleagues possible. The capabilities of this technology also allowed for more

direct teacher-student communication as the SMART Board reduces the dependence on the

proximity to the computer for functional operations (Ball, 2003; Widener, Greene, & Gérard,

1999).

Recall that one goal of our program is to prepare PSMTs to integrate technology in their

teaching for the purpose of facilitating pupils’ mathematics understanding. We emphasize the

use of technology to generate multiple representations, many of which would not be feasible

without technology. We believe that the ongoing experiences they had doing and teaching

mathematics with technology in their year-long pedagogy course and the continuous technology

access and technical assistance they had during their student teaching motivated them to use the

provided technology to support all aspects of their teaching, including both planning and

instruction. Of course this also required the PSMTs to have the freedom to explore technology

uses during their pedagogy course and in their student teaching placements. We assigned student

teachers with clinical instructors who were either technology users themselves, or at least open to

allowing our student teachers to use technology regularly.

Because this study focused on student teachers in a technology-rich, five-year teacher

education program, the findings may not necessarily generalize to other pre-service teachers and

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to in-service teachers. However, others have reported similar results concerning the use of

interactive whiteboards by teachers. For example, Ball (2003) observed that teachers using

interactive whiteboards when delivering prepared lessons did not have to devote time to thinking

about and writing the next task in the lesson, were able to readily switch back and forth between

exploration activities and problem posing, and could easily reuse, modify, and share lessons.

Similarly, Kennewell and Beauchamp (2007) found,

By preparing and loading the resources required for a lesson in advance, teachers

generated a kind of smoothness in their organisational activity, maintained a momentum

to the flow of the lesson, and felt that they kept learners engaged more continuously than

with traditional resources. (p. 234)

Regardless of the extent to which these results can be generalized, they provide insights into

some of the benefits of teachers’ use of technology in planning their lessons.

21

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Note: The research reported here was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education

Fund for the Improvement for Postsecondary Education to the second author.