Enacting New Curriculum: A Teacher's First Attempt with Data Modeling

Abstract

Curriculum designers often put thought into student thinking, but teacher thinking is equally important to consider. Curriculum does not interact with students in a sterile environment, but depends upon the teacher’s implementation. While research concerning teacher thinking and curriculum enactment is sparse, it does imply that a teacher’s thoughts about students, content, tasks, and norms greatly influence practice. An innovative statistics curriculum, Data Modeling, has worked to address this by building educative features into the curriculum, such as sample student thinking, thought revealing questions, and key mathematical ideas. In addition to these, the curriculum makes use of an assessment system intended to inform instruction based upon a progression of students’ statistical thinking. This paper looks at a teacher implementing the Data Modeling curriculum for the first time. Analysis of his teaching showed challenging elements of the curriculum for the teacher. Three examples of these challenges are highlighted: (1) Teacher Language: Calculational v. Conceptual (2) Strategies employed to advance student thinking along the construct, and (3) Classroom Norms. These examples give insight into addressing these challenges when supporting teachers in the future.