A Model for Examining the Criteria Used by Pre-Service Elementary Teachers in Their Evaluation of Technology for Mathematics Teaching

Multiple existing frameworks address aspects of teachers’ knowledge for teaching mathematics with technology. This study proposes the integration of several frameworks, including TPACK (Mishra & Koehler, 2006), MKT (Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008), and technology evaluation criteria (Battey, Kafai, & Franke, 2005) into a new comprehensive model for interpreting teachers’ knowledge of the use of technology for teaching mathematics: the T-MATH (Teachers’ Mathematics and Technology Holistic) Framework The study employed quantitative and qualitative methods to examine 144 pre-service elementary teachers’ evaluations of technology for future mathematics teaching. The proposed model and its application to this group of pre-service teachers suggest that there are multiple dimensions to understanding teachers’ knowledge of uses of technology for mathematics teaching, and that teachers’ self-identified evaluation criteria reveal the dimension in which their knowledge resides. Understanding teachers’ progressions through these dimensions may provide insights into the types of experiences that support teacher development of the knowledge necessary to teach mathematics using appropriate technologies.