Elementary teachers’ reflections on their use of digital instructional resources in four educational contexts: Belgium, Finland, Sweden, and U.S.

We examine teachers’ reflections on incorporating digital instructional resources (DIRs) into their mathematics teaching. We analyze qualitative interviews with 39 elementary school teachers from four educational contexts: Belgium, Finland, Sweden, and the U.S., using a framework proposed by Pepin et al. (Int J Math Educ 46: 645-661, 2017) to consider opportunities for DIRs to shift elements of teaching and learning in potentially transformative ways. Teachers described three major domains of teaching practice where they used DIRs: (a) class instruction, (b) student practice, and (c) professional participation. We found that teachers readily used DIRs during class instruction and to support student practice, guided by their existing instructional goals, which were shaped in part by education structures in the context. Few teachers incorporated DIRs in ways that transformed typical learning spaces. We also found that DIRs impacted several aspects of teachers’ professional practices, including professional learning and collaboration. In particular, participation in social media and resource sharing altered the nature of and ways teachers participated in their own professional learning. We assert that efforts to use DIRs to stimulate change need to begin with an understanding of teachers’ current practices and use our findings to identify three potential levers that might support movement toward change.