Educational Software Interfaces and Teacher’s Use

Walquíria Castelo-Branco Lins Alex Sandro Gomes

Centre of Education - UFPE Centre of Informatics - UFPE

Rua Alcides Codeceira, 320/203 – Rua Prof. Luiz Freire,s/n, Recife-PE
Iputinga –Recife-PE 50800-090 - Brazil Po. Box: 7851, 50732-970, Brazil
wcblins@ufpe.br asg@cin.ufpe.br

Abstract
Designing educational software is normally approached as a pure creative or interdisciplinary
activity. Teachers’ activities are rarely considered in initial requirements elicitation phase. The aim
of our research was to propose a qualitative approach to analyse teachers’ classroom technology
mediated activity as a source of information to educational software design. Our main results show
the need to consider aspects correlated to how flexible the interface is to allow teacher to make
changes according to his/her didactical choices.

1 Introduction
In the educational context, there is a gap between expectations generated from the potentiality of
interactive and digital technologies and the way they are used mediating pedagogic activities
(Resnick, 2001; CastroFilho e Confrey, 2000; Dugdale, 1999). In our viewpoint, many of these
problems are related to usability: methods and operations, that these tools materialize, are
inadequate (Leont’ev, 1975) to pedagogic culture concretised on professional day-life (Tardif,
2002). The National Center for Education Statistics (2000) indicates that half of the teachers of
United States of America who have access to computer and to the web at classroom do not use
them in class. The majority of them use these tools to search models in class, to plan their
activities, to elaborate teaching materials and to communicate, but they do not feel confident to
introduce them in pedagogic activities with pupils in classroom.
Researches in Mathematics Education points to the same issue: teachers use technologies in their
teaching activities, in a limited way. Some researchers point to the need for improvement in their
teacher training (Kennedy, 1990; Ball, 1991 apud CastroFilho e Confrey, 2000). So, the point is
how to train these teachers? According to Handler & Strudler (1997), Thomas (1999) and Wang &
Holthaus (1999) quoted in Pope et al. (2002), in general, teacher’s undergraduate degrees
(colleges of Education) include courses to introduce teacher on computer use, however, the
methodological and educational courses do not use computer as a tools to discuss teaching and
learning process on different content. Teachers learn how to use technology, but do not learn how
to teach with them (Pope, Hare & Howard, 2002). Literature on school use of computer, normally,
focuses researches on students’ learning. There are a small quantity of researches on the relation
between technology and teaching activities. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate teachers
practice in the context of their pedagogic activities (CastroFilho & Confrey, 2000; NCES, 2000).
Another historic source of problem is raised by considerations of educational software design
quality (Frye & Soloway, 1987; Hinostroza & Mellar, 2001). The literature points to the limited
quality of these materials as a factor that leads to a small percentage of use in pedagogical
practice. According to Hinostroza & Mellar (2001), educational software designers give priority to
questions related to learning, and this would be a cause of teachers’ difficulties to incorporate
these materials in their class activities.
Our purpose is to investigate teaching activities using computational interfaces in classroom. In
the second section of this paper, we discuss elicitation of requirements to educational software. In
the third section, we describe details of method used in this research. The fourth section, some
data illustrate the way we identified requirements related to teaching practice. Finally, we
conclude discussing the results of this research.

2 Eliciting requirements for Educational Software

Researches on Human-Machine interactions have been pointed how e how much user-computer
interactions are affected by technology and by social context, in which user is engaged. Tools
quality should be related to the conditions that allow users to effectively and satisfactorily reach
the aims of their activities. Then, to discover the real users’ needs and in which conditions they
act, it is necessary to investigate their use context (Nardi, 1996). In our research, the users are
mathematic teachers and our aim is to elicit their requirements when the activities are mediated by
computational interfaces to teach fractions.
Our theoretical framework is the activity theory – developed by Leont’ev – based on researches of
Vigotsky, Rubinstein and others, started in 1920. This theory is used as a tool to investigate the
development of human activities mediated by context and socio-cultural artefacts. According to
their theoretical principles is through human activities, mediated by cultural artefacts and people,
that consciousness are developed. Artefacts are, among other things, laws, rules, procedure,
division of labour, tools, language and concepts (Kuutti, 1996). They are created and modified
during an activity and they can be used to control our behaviour (Bellamy, 1996). The artefacts
come from the context in which it is inserted and are internalised and externalised by subjects
through their acts, speech, been able to be evaluated and corrected. Tool is something that is
produced to overcome some needs of the activity, to teaching aims, which shape ways and
operations of use, but do not shape actions and aims (Leont’ev, 1975). This transformation of
objects into tools are not arbitrarily produced, it is necessary an appropriation of the object in
itself, appropriation of “natural logic” of the object to be inserted into the logic of human activity.
They are oriented by reasons directed to objects (material or ideal). For example: the reason that
structure teacher’s activity to teach fractions is students’ learning of concepts involved in
understanding fractions. The object is to learn fractions. According to the aims to which human
procedures are oriented, we can relate hierarchic and differentiated levels of procedures:
operations, actions and activities. The activity is oriented by one reason; the actions by aims and
the operations are related to conditions to do the actions. The subject of the activity, in turn, is
inserted in the community where people relationships are mediated by artefacts, rules and division
of labour (Bellamy, 1996).
Mediating Artifact
(radio, TV, pen and paper, computer, language, etc.)

.
Subject Object Outcome

Rules Community Division of Labor

(rules of conduct, class (teachers, administrators, (principal, governing body,
rules, etc.) parents, students, etc.) teaching, specialist teaching,
learning etc )
Figure 1: Model of Activity Analysis of Cole and Engerström (1991) to K-12 Education
These issues raised in this research will support the development of software to teach fractions. On
the one hand, in Brazilian education, this is a concept pointed as to be difficult for a large
percentage of our students to cope with. On the other hand, there are few educational software
programs to teach fractions, and the majority of them repeat a teaching approach, which works
associating iconic representations of area (pizzas and rectangles) with numeric representations. In
our research, we reach the problem of developing the interface of this material by identifying
requirements of two kinds. The first is related to the conceptual field (fractions on multiplicative
structures) and the second is related to the teaching practice. In this paper, we present results of a
study to elicit requirements related to practice to design a software to teach fractions.

3 Method
Aiming to reach some elements of teaching practice mediated by computational interfaces, a
research method was designed. The research comprised some phases undertaken by ten
mathematic teachers during an in-service training, which is part of AMaDeuS1 project. The first
phase of the study was to characterize teacher practice using a semi-structured interview and an
observation of teacher class while teaching fraction in their teaching context. During the course,
the teachers were required to choose an educational software and were oriented to build an activity
to approach fractions with the chosen software, experience it with a par of students while video-
recording the session, analyse the session, then, plan a class for the whole class. So, our data are:
transcriptions of the interviews, video-records of teacher participation during the course, email
communication of a e-group created for the course, with participation of the teachers and the
instructors, a first activity planning, video-recording of the classes with and without the software
with teachers’ pupils, a report of the session undertaken by the teacher. The analyses presented
here is the results of two of the teachers who focuses their activities on the concept of fraction.
The other teachers chose to work with other mathematic concepts. The research is still analysing
the data to refine categories to elicit requirements of the mathematic teachers.

3.1 The analysis

In other to understand a phenomenon is necessary to know its development process, the changes
made on it, up to its actual form. It is in the totality of this principle that the use of the theory of
activity lies as a tools to elicit and to analyse the development of different human practices, in
particular, the teaching practice. The subject of the activity is inserted in a community (teachers,
parents, principals, students, etc). In this community, the relations between people are mediated
by: artefacts (tv, radio, pen and paper, chalkboard, computer, etc), rules (conduct, classroom rules,
etc) and division of labour (orientation, administration, teaching, learning, specialized learning,
etc) (Engeström, 1993 apud Bellamy, 1996).
Our analysis focus the way teachers plan, execute and assess the impact of their own teaching with
the use of the educational software.

4 Analysis and Discussion

The teaching practice using the software are structured from the choice of the content and of a
software to teach the chosen content. A diversity of educational software was let available to the
teachers and they were taught to use them. However, our teachers chose the software that the
scenarios were close to students’ day-life. The teachers did not analyse the quality of

1
Partially financed by CNPq.
representations and properties of the focused concept, neither the meaning of this concept in the
software (fraction). They chose to work with a hypermedia software program that simulate a
supermarket, and despite of the mathematical content be defined, tracing as actions in classroom
the students exploited the software following the levels proposed in the software. Both teachers
justified their choice saying that it was to be close to students’ reality. They claim for the inclusion
of a clock in the software to observe how long students take to collect goods, to go to pay, and to
pay. They argued that, in day-life, everyone has time constrains to act. Terms such as context, day-
life were frequent in their justifications that approximate their decision to educational movements
in Brazil, that claims for mathematic teaching more close to students reality (Brasil, 1998).
However, the teachers had difficulties to identify, in the contextual representations, properties of
the concepts they have as teaching aims. The difficulty allows one to delegate to the software the
aims and the actions, which were defined, without the software, in their planning. The interface
seems to be something to be followed by student, following the levels defined in the software, as it
happens in the textbooks. In the case of our two teachers, they felt inhibited to interfere in
students’ motivation to exploit the software. This data lead us to propose as requirement related to
the teacher practice ‘how the software allow a adaptation of its interface to teacher practice’,
because there is a clear tension between what the teacher can do without the material and what
s/he can do with the software. Teacher Anne, one of our subjects, is a typical example, her class
was planned to work a mathematical concept and ends working with another concept, when
students decided to change the level of the software. Her first aim was to exploit additive
structures with natural number is change by the aim of the students to reach the highest level of the
software. The professional tries to use a new type of material, but perceive, even that implicitly, its
limited flexibility when compared to touchable and manipulative materials. The software does not
allow teachers to define tools, context, time and action to reach the object of its activity, as they
did when using pen and paper and manipulative material to teach fractions. The flux of activities
proposed by the educational software interferes directly on the flux of activities that are normally
undertaken by teacher in their rhetoric to teach something. In this sense, we identify the need of
the software to be more flexible to allow teacher to define the teaching variable. A criterion to
consider in designing a interface is how it allows teacher to choose their didactical variables and to
adapt the platform to it; actions, operations and teaching activities to reach the learning of the
concepts, the development of abilities, procedures, among others, which involve institutions,
curriculum, students, parents, etc. It deals with intangible technologies as didactical transpositions,
administrations and knowledge of the content and of the available materials (Tardif, 2002). It
involves coordination of curricular time. Regarding this point, one of the main teacher’s worry,
while planning and executing their activities, is adapting this activities to class time, and the time
they have to do all these activities required by the curriculum, which is claimed by parents,
administrators, principals, etc. Since the beginning of the activities, the teachers select materials
adapting them to the time the have to appropriate the material to teaching, difficulties the material
offers use and what can contribute to improve quality of teaching conditions.

5 Conclusion
The results show the need to consider aspects correlated to how flexible the interface is to allow
teacher to make changes according to his/her didactical choices, integrating teacher’s decision
within the interface. The results also points to the need to consider practice and curricular
limitations as requirement in software design.
6 References

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7 Acknowledge
We thanks to the volunteer teachers for their participations and the financial support from CNPq
(CNPq/ProTeM-CC Proc. n. 680210/01-6 and n. 477645/2001-1).