The Role of Teacher Thinking in Technology-Based Reform: A Multiple Case Study

As teachers attempt to navigate an increasingly technological educational environment, they find themselves faced with numerous barriers. This study looked at three teacher leaders who navigated, with varying degrees of success, various contexts of and barriers to technology based reform. The purpose of this study was to investigate each teacher’s classroom technology usage and to examine how personal, cultural and contextual factors affected each teacher’s ability and willingness to use technology in support of their mathematics instruction. This study used a multiple case study design and relied on multiple qualitative data sources. Findings indicated that, while context and teacher characteristics influenced the change process, teacher thinking, in the form of a student-oriented focus, played the largest role in enabling teachers to adopt technology-based changes. Implications from this study emphasize the need to motivate teachers to reconstruct their knowledge and beliefs about the role of technology in mathematics education.