Introduction

Evidence suggests that mathematics curriculum is shifting from publisher-created, hard copy materials to online materials created by both publishers and teachers (e.g., Gewertz, 2014; Monahan, 2015; Ross, 2015). Remote teaching due to the COVID-19 health pandemic may have further pushed teachers toward using more online curricular materials. We share here the results of a nationwide survey of upper elementary mathematics teachers administered during Fall 2020 in order to help mathematics teacher educators support preservice teachers in selecting, adapting, and supplementing their curriculum with online resources. The findings provide a recent look at the mathematics curricular resources used, as well as some of the challenges faced by teachers during remote instruction.

Survey and Participants

The data represent 524 responses from a nationwide survey of third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers. Most respondents taught in public schools (90%) located in suburban (55%), urban (28%), and rural (17%) districts. The purpose of the survey was to identify the mathematics curricular resources used and explore teachers’ decision-making related to these resources in order to better understand and support the needs of teachers and preservice teachers when navigating the diverse curricular choices currently available. The survey contains 31 base items, with additional follow-up questions based on survey logic. Teachers were asked about their curriculum use before the pandemic and during remote teaching in Spring 2020, as well as their plans for using curriculum in the 2020-2021 school year. The survey also asked about preparation for remote teaching, barriers for student learning, decision-making about curriculum including teacher control, strategies for assessing student learning, and teacher and school demographics. The timing of the survey was impacted by the pandemic, as 99% of the participants had shifted to remote instruction in March 2020. This change allowed us to additionally gain insight into the challenges teachers faced in transitioning to remote teaching and learning during the pandemic.

Findings

Shifts Away from Published Core Curricula

The survey results confirms the findings of others (e.g., Gewertz, 2014; Monahan, 2015; Ross, 2015) that there is an ongoing shift in the curricular landscape from teachers using a single publisher-created, hard-copy resource to multiple resources, including online materials and materials created by teachers. Our results show that the online Teachers Pay Teachers was the most widely used supplemental resource, both before and during the pandemic. Specifically, 48% of teachers reported using it prior to the pandemic, with 44% doing so during Spring 2020 remote instruction and 44% planning continued use in Fall 2020. A smaller subset of teachers also used online teacher-made resources from Pinterest (17% prior to pandemic, 13% in Spring 2020, and 15% in Fall 2020). The findings also show other online curriculum supplements such as BrainPop (32% prior to pandemic, 30% in Spring 2020, and 25% in Fall 2020) and IXL (22% prior to pandemic, 23% in Spring 2020, and 19% in Fall 2020) were frequently used by teachers. Additionally, teachers indicated that they designed their own curricular materials (27%), and this percentage increased somewhat as instruction shifted during the pandemic (35%) and into planning for the next school year (32%). 

The findings show the most frequently used publisher-created core curricula were Envision Math (25% prior to the pandemic, 23% in Spring 2020, and 23% in Fall 2020), Engage NY/Eureka (21% prior to the pandemic, 17% in Spring 2020, 19% in Fall 2020), and Go Math (19% prior to the pandemic, 15% in Spring 2020, 16% in Fall 2020). Beyond these curricula, the numbers of teachers using any particular core curriculum dropped sharply; all other resources were reported by less than 10% of the teachers surveyed. In general, these data suggest that more teachers chose teacher-made and online supplemental resources than traditional published curricula.

Curricular Decision-making Due to the Pandemic

Teachers did not feel prepared for remote teaching prior to the transition in March 2020. The majority of teachers (58%) indicated they were “not at all” prepared to take on the challenges, and 59% reported they needed to make significant revisions to their instructional materials. Changes necessitated by students’ remote learning needs were complicated by the degree to which teachers lacked autonomy to make decisions. For example, teachers reported that curricular decisions during the pandemic were mostly made by district leaders (60%), principals (41%), grade-level teams (39%), and school boards (17%), with very few teachers reporting they were completely in control (11%).

Although teacher autonomy was often limited, the shift toward teachers creating their own curriculum and utilizing resources created by other teachers was evident, as described earlier. Teachers also reported adapting their curricular materials for numerous reasons, the most common being that their existing materials were not conducive to online remote instruction (62%). Teachers also commonly reported that adaptations needed to be made to support equity of access (58%) and diverse learning needs (56%). In addition, many teachers adapted materials to ensure critical content was covered (54%), while others made adaptations to prioritize student well-being over academic progress (38%).  

Access to Remote Learning

On the survey, a majority of teachers (62%) reported that most of their students were able to access needed technology. However, teachers also reported that students faced barriers. Seventy percent indicated that students had no, poor, or shared access to the internet, and 59% reported that students had limited access to computers/tablets. Fifty percent of teachers noted challenges tied to students having to share work space with other family members. Many teachers needed to adapt lessons for students who did not have adequate access to the internet (42%) and to make lessons easier for families to support students engaged in remote learning (52%). Teachers primarily used live video (76%) and online learning management systems (75%) to collect evidence of student learning. Teachers also collected evidence of student learning via email (41%), phone (31%), and text messages (30%).  

Teachers’ Final Thoughts

On the survey, teachers were given an opportunity to write additional information they wanted to share about their curricular use during the pandemic. In coding these responses, we noted that there was an unexpected large number of responses that focused on positive outcomes from an otherwise negative situation (n = 63 positive, compared to n = 140 negative). The negative responses typically noted how “challenging”, “difficult”, “stressful”, and “frustrating” it was to shift to remote teaching. In contrast, the positive responses included what teachers had learned. For example, one teacher said, “I loved learning how to utilize technologies that I hadn't used before.” We see these responses as an important marker of teacher resilience, demonstrating how teachers work within adverse circumstances to create moments when they can thrive and not just survive (Beltman, Mansfield, Price, 2011).

Fifty-nine teachers shared advice directed at supporting other teachers. This advice ranged from descriptions of curriculum that worked or did not work with remote learning (n = 43), technology that either supported their teaching or made it more challenging (n = 91), and their successes or challenges in assessing student learning remotely (n = 53). It is evident in these data that many teachers learned valuable lessons during the pandemic and were interested in sharing their new insights.

Conclusion

In this article we briefly report on teachers’ use of mathematics curricular resources and decisions they made both prior to and during the pandemic, as well as challenges they faced during online/remote teaching and learning. The findings suggest increasing shifts toward online supplemental curricular resources even before the pandemic and that teachers were designing their own curriculum to better meet their students’ needs, including technological access during remote instruction in Spring 2020. Teachers played a major role in connecting students and their families to schools during this difficult time period. The findings further suggest that teachers adapted the curriculum and instructional activities to meet the diverse needs of their students, but they still faced many challenges such as poor internet access, computer access, and work spaces at home that potentially impacted students’ opportunities to learn, opportunities that were unlikely to be equitably distributed across school contexts. The findings offer considerations for mathematics teacher educators, who might modify their own curriculum to include opportunities for preservice teachers to select and evaluate a range of curricular resources, to consider online capabilities of curriculum, and to adapt resources to meet the specific needs of their students.

References

Beltman, S., Mansfield, C., & Price, A. (2011). Thriving not just surviving: A review of research on teacher resilience, Educational Research Review, 6(3),185-207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2011.09.001.

Gewertz, C. (2014). Teachers a key source of Common-Core curricula, study finds. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/teachers-a-key-source-of-common-core-curricula-study-finds/2014/10 

Monahan, R. (2015). How Common Core is killing the textbook. https://hechingerreport.org/how-common-core-is-killing-the-textbook/  

Ross, T. (2015). The death of textbooks? The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/03/the-death-of-textbooks/387055/