The Relationship Between the Use of Curriculum Materials and Inquiry-Based Pedagogy

• Main Author: Elzinga, Laura Jo
• Format: Others
• Published: BYU ScholarsArchive 2021
• Subjects: mathematics; inquiry-based teaching; curriculum; Education
• Online Access: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/8905; https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9914&context=etd

Little change has resulted from decades of attempts at reforming the teaching of mathematics (Davis et al., 1990). This study involved approximately 43 teachers who had completed an inquiry-based professional development program prior to being provided with a new mathematics curriculum designed to support inquiry-based teaching. It analyzed the relationships between their implementation of the inquiry-based teaching and their use of the curriculum materials. A series of bivariate correlations were run to investigate the relationships between the professional development and aspects related to the implementation of the new curriculum. The factors being so inter-related, it was hypothesized that relationships would exist between all of the factors, but only some of the expected relationships materialized. Like others before, this study supports the idea that merely providing professional development and new curriculum will not always result in a change in teaching. While the teachers in this study were not necessarily resistant to change, a lack of time to implement new teaching does seem to have affected the level of change in teaching. Future research is needed related to methods and timing related to the implementation of new teaching practices and curriculum and their relationship to teacher change.