The Integrated Mathematics Wiki-book Project

Principle Investigator

Prof. Ruhama Even

R&D team – current members

Dr. Michal Ayalon

Shai Olsher (Ph.D student)

Prof. Edriss Titi, Faculty of mathematics and computer science

R&D team – alumni

Gila Osruso-Hagag

Summary

The relationships between teachers and textbooks are generally associated with curriculum enactment and teachers' use of curriculum materials. In contrast to their central role in curriculum enactment, teachers usually play a rather insignificant role in the development of textbooks. Teachers' aspirations about desired textbooks as well as adjustments that they make in textbooks – based on their experiences, their knowledge and beliefs about mathematics and its teaching and learning, as well as their acquaintance with the system in which they teach and with their own students – often remain unknown to curriculum developers. The Integrated Mathematics Wiki-book Project aims to expand the conventional relationships between teachers and curriculum developers, which are mainly unidirectional – stemming from curriculum developers to teachers – into a bidirectional relationship: to stem also from the teachers to the curriculum developers. To this end, we invite teachers to collaborate in editing the textbooks they use in their classes and to produce, as group products, revised versions of these textbooks – wiki-based revised textbooks that are suitable for a broad student population. Several characteristics of the work environment offered by the Integrated Mathematics Wiki-book Project are not usually part of teachers' practice. This includes, designing a textbook for a broad student population instead of focusing on the specific student population taught, generating a textbook by making changes to a textbook designed by expert curriculum developers, and consulting with professionals that are not part of the teachers' usual milieu (mathematician, curriculum developers, mathematics education researchers). Initial findings about the changes teachers suggested to textbooks feed into the development of revised versions of these textbooks, all belonging to the Integrated Mathematics curriculum program.

Related publications

Even, R. & Olsher, S. (in press). Teachers as participants in textbook development: The Integrated Mathematics Wiki-book Project. In Y. Li, & Lappan, G. (Eds.) Mathematics Curriculum in School Education. Springer.