Assessing a Formative Intervention with Prospective Primary School Teachers on Textbook Lesson Analysis

Abstract

The textbook remains the teacher's preferred curriculum material. It constitutes a source for teachers learning, and largely determines what happens in the classroom. In this research work, we describe and analyze a formative intervention with 59 prospective primary school teachers, which was aimed at developing the textbook lesson analysis competence. We proposed to these prospective teachers to systematically analyze a lesson on proportionality, by applying the Didactical Suitability Theory facets and components. The choice of proportionality is due to the importance that its study receives in the curricula of Primary and Secondary Education, and that proportionality is not usually adequately presented in textbooks. The written reports produced by 13 work-teams are compared with the a priori analysis carried out by the researchers. The results analysis reveals that the epistemic deficiencies of the lesson were not clearly identified by the prospective teachers, thus revealing their limited didacticmathematical knowledge on proportionality and their lack of critical evaluation of the textbook.