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Mathematics Teachers Edit Textbooks: Opportunities and Challenges

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Abstract

This chapter examines potential opportunities and challenges associated with giving teachers the opportunity to edit the textbooks they use in class. It draws on a set of studies for which the M-TET (Mathematics Teachers Edit Textbooks) project served as research setting. The unique aspects that characterize the work environment offered to teachers include the following: producing a textbook by making changes in a textbook designed by expert curriculum developers, designing a textbook for a broad student population, collaborating with other teachers in order to produce an agreed-upon textbook, and consulting with professionals that are not part of the teachers’ usual milieu (textbook authors and mathematicians). This chapter demonstrates first the potential of the M-TET work environment to reveal teachers’ wishes and desires regarding textbooks, and it attends to possible implications of teachers’ editing of textbooks with respect to the ways in which mathematics is portrayed and offered. It then focuses on the potential of the M-TET work environment to transform the conventional connections of teachers with textbook authors and with mathematicians.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Science Teaching, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    Ruhama Even

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  1. Ruhama Even
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Correspondence to Ruhama Even .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Seymour Fox School of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Yifat Ben-David Kolikant

  2. Faculty of Education, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada

    Dragana Martinovic

  3. Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Marina Milner-Bolotin

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Even, R. (2020). Mathematics Teachers Edit Textbooks: Opportunities and Challenges. In: Ben-David Kolikant, Y., Martinovic, D., Milner-Bolotin, M. (eds) STEM Teachers and Teaching in the Digital Era. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29396-3_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29396-3_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-29395-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-29396-3

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