Implementing new curriculum material is a complex, multifaceted process influenced by factors like the curriculum, teacher interpretation, and classroom dynamics. As Remillard and Bryans (2004) highlighted, there’s a gap in our understanding of how teachers interpret and apply new materials, emphasizing the need to study teachers’ interpretations and methods to improve math education, particularly in Sweden, where curriculum materials are typically not prescribed and not mandatory.

This research, grounded in curriculum material and teacher cognition theories, examines the application of three lessons from the unfamiliar, innovative TRR (Thinking, Reasoning, and Reckoning) mathematics curriculum by two Grade 1 teachers in Sweden. The aim is to comprehend how teachers interpret this structured material, identify factors causing instructional variations, and understand these variations’ impact on student engagement and learning. The central question is: “How do teachers adapt and implement lessons from a new, prescribed curriculum material?”

This ongoing study uses video recordings, teacher interviews, and student work as data sources. Initial findings suggest teachers’ instructional methods are heavily influenced by their styles and interpretations of the curriculum material, considerably influencing students’ learning opportunities. Established mental routines, like ingrained teaching habits, are observed to influence teachers’ actions, creating a gap between intentions and behavior (Sfard, 2023).

The study’s findings aim to improve our understanding of curriculum implementation practices, potentially informing future teacher training and curriculum development efforts. The results, shared at the conference, strive to shed light on the relationship between teacher interpretation, curriculum implementation, and student learning outcomes within Swedish education, where prescribed curriculum materials are uncommon.

This presentation reports on a case study that examines four Finnish and four Swedish primary school teachers’ practices, utilizing the same original Finnish curriculum materials. Data consists of three video-recorded mathematics lessons, of which one per teacher is analysed in this presentation. The analyses uncover notable differences in classroom practices between the teachers in the two countries. The Finnish teachers utilize a more comprehensive range of questioning techniques, fostering active student participation, whereas the Swedish teachers deploy a more limited set of questions. This research contributes to the ongoing discussions about the nature and quality of instructional approaches in mathematics education from the implementation in two Nordic contexts.

Using an ecological and dynamic view of teacher agency, this study explores the relationships between teachers’ professional actions and decisions, mathematics curriculum materials (CMs), and cultural norms and values at play in four educational contexts: Finland, Flanders (Belgium), Sweden, and the United States. The data were drawn from a survey of 397 teachers (grades 1-6), inquiring into self-reported use and perceptions of their CMs. Analysis of the most commonly reported CMs illustrated characteristics that reflect cultural values in each context. Survey findings indicated that teachers in all contexts use CMs purposefully and in relation to their own ideas about teaching. We also found context-specific differences in how teachers relied on CMs for different curricular aims, adding complexity to notions of CM use. 

This cross-cultural study examines how elementary mathematics teachers in Finland and the United States shifted their instructional systems during the period of Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) in the spring of 2020. Using Ruthven's (2009) framework of Structural Features of Classroom Practice, researchers analysed 15 teachers’ descriptions of their mathematics teaching during ERT in contrast to their typical practice. Exploring how teachers in both contexts navigated challenges of ERT through a cross-cultural lens allowed researchers to identify similarities and differences in teaching practices and use of activity formats, synthesized in composite models of teachers’ instructional systems. The differences in the systems can be traced to underlying cultural assumptions about the nature of elementary mathematics education and the roles of teachers, students, and curriculum resources within each system.

From an implementation perspective, there is a need to research the effects of large-scale projects. We focus on a project that engages over 1,000 teachers who implement a teaching model via highly scripted teacher guides. In this single case study, we analyzed video recordings of a third-grade teacher’s innovation enactment of a teaching cycle. We found that the teaching deviated from the implementation program determinants. We discuss potential reasons for the teacher’s lack of fidelity to scheme theory.

We examine the feasibility of using the Documentational Approach to Didactics to gauge the fidelity and character of teachers’ implementation of scripted teaching sequences for the teaching of arithmetic in primary school. By analyzing a video-recorded lesson, we found that the teacher adapted the scripted teaching sequence by merging it with other resources such as self-made worksheets and an interactive whiteboard. The teacher also made adaptations to the prescribed organization of the teaching. Through the analysis, we gain insight into the nature of the adaptions and find that Documental Approach to Didactics can be used as a lens to distinguish between surface adaptions, that do not interfere with the program theory and adaptions that violate core ideas of the innovation. The results provide a background for a discussion of pro-fidelity versus pro-adaption point of view in implementation research.

We present a typology for characterizing online student-facing mathematics platforms that examines how they position students as learners, exemplified by 9 commonly used platforms. We identify three types of student learning experiences: instruction and practice, practice and support, and conceptual games and activities, and describe each one in terms of the relationships among instructional guidance, student agency, and the mathematical rigor of tasks. We find that within and across categories, there is substantial variation in cognitive demand and student agency, offering implications for further research, school decision makers and platform designers. 

 Tidigare forskning har visat att lärare är centrala aktörer i undervisning men också läromedlens stora betydelse för undervisningen och lärande har lyfts fram. Dock har mycket av forskningen kring läromedel och dess betydelse för undervisning och lärande gjorts i USA och endast ett fåtal studier har genomförts i Europa och Norden. Det finns dessutom väldigt få tvärkulturella läromedelsstudier, speciellt sådana som undersöker hur ett läromedel används i ett annat kulturellt sammanhang än där det har skapats. Denna avhandling är ett försök att fylla det tomrummet. Föreliggande studie syftar således till att bidra till kunskap om finska läromedel i matematik och lärarnas interaktion med ett ursprungligen finskt läromedel i två skilda kultur-pedagogiska sammanhang: det finska sammanhanget där läromedlet har utvecklats, och i ett nytt sammanhang, det svenska där det finska materialet har tagits i bruk. Jag undersöker därmed de mest använda finska lärarhandledningarna i matematik (klass 1–6) och hur fyra finska och fyra svenska lärare interagerar med dem. I sin helhet återfinns studien inom det kvalitativa tolkande forskningsparadigmet och dess teoretiska hemvist är det sociokulturella perspektivet där interaktionen mellan en lärare och läromedel är central. Avhandlingen är en fortsättning på min licentiatuppsats och består av fem artiklar, varav de tre första är dokumentanalyser och de två senare är fallstudier. Den första delen av avhandlingen undersöker, genom olika typer av innehållsanalyser, egenskaper hos finska läromedel i matematik. Resultaten avslöjar stora likheter mellan de finska lärarhandledningarna i matematik vad gäller dess innehåll, form och typ av kommunikation. Resultaten visar vidare att det finns tre normer dolda i lärarhandledningarnas konstruerade matematiklektioner, vilka tillsammans återspeglar matematikundervisning som en helklassaktivitet. Tidigare forskning har dessutom visat att dessa normer även är tydligt synliga i den finska pedagogiska kontexten. Sammantaget indikerar läromedelsstudierna vissa kulturella spår i texten som finns i de finska läromedlen vilka verkar följa ett kulturellt manus. Detta manus återspeglar de underliggande finska kulturella traditionerna och utbildningsprioriteringarna, både vad gäller innehållets enhetlighet och de bakomliggande åsikterna om undervisning och lärande. Den andra delen av avhandlingen utforskar genom fallstudier finländska och svenska lärares interaktion med läromedel som härstammar från Finland. Resultaten avslöjar mycket olika tillvägagångssätt vad gäller planering av matematiklektioner, där de finska lärarna planerar för hela lektioner medan de svenska lärarna planerar för en kort föreläsning, genomgång. Resultaten visar vidare även betydande skillnader på vad finska och svenska lärare väljer att använda från lärarhandledningarna och hur de organiserar och strukturerar sina matematiklektioner. Dessa fallstudier indikerar väldigt olika normer beträffande planering och genomförande av matematikundervisning och därmed också olika interaktion med läromedlet. De finska lärarnas interaktion återspeglar således kulturella normer och rutiner som är i linje med både det finska läromedlet och dess utbildningspraxis. Medan de svenska lärarnas interaktion återspeglar de klassrumsrutiner och normer som är i linje med den svenska utbildningspraxisen, och inte med de normer som återfinns i de finska läromedlen. Det är rimligt att överväga att det kan vara möjligt eller till och med givande att använda ett finskt läromedel i det svenska sammanhanget, eftersom både miljöerna och utbildningskulturerna tycks vara ganska lika. Emellertid har denna studie visat att det inte är så uppenbart och att det finns vissa hinder. Att importera läromedel från andra utbildningskulturella sammanhang för att skapa nya rutiner och normer kräver djupgående och eftertänksamma justeringar i förhållande till det nya sammanhanget; förutom justeringar av läromedlet i sig krävs också kompetensutveckling i hur man använder och modifierar materialet. Avhandlingen bidrar till det internationella forskningsfältet om läromedel i matematik och lärarnas användning av dem. Den har också relevans för läromedelsförlag och författare, skolhuvudmän och lärare samt lärarutbildare.

Previous research has shown that teachers are central actors in teaching, but the great importance of the use of curriculum materials for teachers has also been highlighted. However, much of the research on curriculum materials and their role in teaching and learning has been conducted in the United States, and only a few studies have been conducted in Europe, including the Nordic countries. Further, there are relatively few crosscultural studies in relation to curriculum materials available. Studies investigating curriculum materials, developed in a cultural context other than where they are used, are especially rare This thesis is an attempt to fill that gap. The present study aims at contributing to knowledge about Finnish curriculum materials in mathematics, and teachers' interaction with them in two different cultural-educational contexts: the Finnish context, in which the curriculum materials are developed, and in a new context, the Swedish, into which the materials are adopted. I thus examine the most commonly used Finnish teacher guides in mathematics (Grades 1–6), and how four Finnish and four Swedish teachers interact with originally Finnish curriculum materials. This study is positioned within the qualitative interpretative research paradigm with a socio-cultural perspective, where the interaction between a teacher and curriculum materials is central. The thesis is a continuation of my licentiate essay and consists of five papers, of which the first three are document analyses and the last two are case studies. The first part of the thesis examines the characteristics of Finnish curriculum materials in mathematics through content analyses. The results reveal great similarities between the Finnish teacher guides regarding content, form, and nature of communication. The results further display three norms embedded in the teacher guides’ potentially constructed mathematics lessons, which jointly reflect mathematics teaching as a whole-class activity. Previous research has shown that these norms are clearly visible in the Finnish education context. Taken together, the studies about curriculum materials indicate cultural traces in the text of Finnish curriculum materials that seems to follow a cultural script. These scripts reflect the underlying Finnish cultural traditions and educational priorities, regarding both the uniformity of the content and the underlying views about teaching and learning. The second part of the thesis consists of case studies exploring Finnish and Swedish teachers’ interaction with curriculum materials originated from Finland. The results reveal very different approaches when it comes to planning of mathematics lessons, where the Finnish teachers plan for the whole lessons while the Swedish teachers plan for a short introductory lecture, ‘genomgång’. The results further display significant differences in what Finnish and Swedish teachers choose to use from the teacher guides, and how they organise and structure mathematics lessons. These case studies indicate very different norms regarding both planning and enactment of mathematics lessons, and thereby different interactions with the curriculum materials. The Finnish teachers' interaction reflects cultural norms and routines aligned with both the Finnish curriculum materials and common educational practise. The Swedish teachers’ interaction, on the other hand, reflects the classroom routines and norms aligned with the Swedish educational practise, and not the norms found in the Finnish curriculum materials. It is reasonable to consider it possible and even fruitful to implement Finnish curriculum materials in the Swedish context, since the environment and the educational cultures seem to be rather similar. However, this study has shown that it is not that straight forward and that there are obstacles. To import curriculum materials from other cultural-educational contexts, in order to create new routines and norms, require profound and thoughtful adjustments in relation to the new context, and, in addition to adjustments of the curriculum materials, also professional development in how to use and adapt the material. The thesis contributes to the international research discourse on mathematics curriculum materials and teachers’ use of them. Furthermore, the results are relevant to publishing houses and authors, school heads and teachers, as well as teacher educators.