The Narrative of Sets of Curricular Resources as Described by Teachers

Teachers are central actors in the interpretation and implementation processes of curricular resources. Holding this central position in the teaching and learning of mathematics, teacher's interactions with curriculum resources are often studied in different stages and forms of interactions. In this study we focus on means of communication that teachers use to describe the narrative, underlying main characteristics, of a set of curricular resources. This study explores which characteristics do teachers use when they characterize through tagging a set of curricular resources, and how does their description of the curricular resources' narrative uses different levels of analysis of the tagged characteristics. The study analyses the tagging and descriptions of 4 individual teachers as part of a professional development program during a MA course. The course focused on analysis of textbooks and curricular materials, and included experimenting in tagging and representing different sets of curricular resources. The tagging included selecting the characteristics to be tagged, and then the use of these characteristics to describe the narrative of the set of curricular resources, composed of 50 different tasks.