A tri-lens approach for unpacking teachers' design of instructional materials

Abstract

Teacher-designed notes and worksheets are common instructional materials used in Singapore mathematics classrooms that are critical to guiding the flow of a lesson. However, making sense of how teachers design these materials is complex and research that reports on their creation is only just emerging. In this paper, we propose a tri-lens approach for capturing teachers’ design processes by using notions of pedagogical reasoning and action, curricular noticing, and resources, orientations and goals. We demonstrate how these frameworks combine to form a tri-lens for unpacking important aspects of teachers’ design work using the example of Mrs Fung, an experienced secondary mathematics teacher. We further illustrate how a tri-lens approach can provide a more comprehensive portrait of the teacher and argue that this approach can potentially address the complexity of teachers’ design processes when crafting instructional materials.