Interactive whiteboards as mediating tools for teaching mathematics: rhetoric or reality?

Abstract

Interactive whiteboards (IWB) are an innovation that is gaining considerable presence in many contemporary classrooms. This paper examines the use of IWBs in mathematics classrooms. Using a productive pedagogies framework to analyse classroom videos, it is proposed that the classrooms observed used a restricted approach in their use of IWBs. It was found that they were used for quick introductions to lessons, were teacher directed, whole class teaching and fostered shallow learning. Through interviews with the teachers, it was found that the approaches observed were based on assumptions about learners and technology. In this paper, we explore the ways in which teachers use Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) in mathematics classrooms. There is a sense that this tool may offer considerable potential to enhance student learning. Promoters of the tool provide case studies of the novelty and support that can be achieved through the clever use of the tool for example, (Edwards, Hartnell, & Martin, 2002). How this is enacted in classrooms is the focus of the analysis in this paper. In exploring computer-mediated learning, Waycott, Jones and Scanlon (2005, p.107) reported that there is a reciprocity between the tools and the learner where “the user adapts the tools they use according to their everyday practice and preferences in order to carry out their activities; and how, in turn, the tools themselves also modify the activities that the user is engaged in.” We argue that this is the same for teachers.