Analysis of teachers understanding of spreadsheet dependability : teacher interviews

Abstract

"Each year, the grant support varying numbers of teachers to investigate spreadsheets with the intent of integrating teaching mathematics/science with spreadsheets. These teachers were taught to focus on teaching about key concepts of spreadsheet design while they also taught with the spreadsheets as tools for learning mathematics/science. As part of their instruction they investigated the developing prototypes as tools that focused on key concepts of the design of accurate and dependable spreadsheets. During the first year of the project, some teachers attempted to directly transfer their activities with the prototypes to their classroom situations. However, many technical difficulties arose due to the stability of the prototypes. Therefore, the Education/Outreach staff focused the instruction on dependability and creating dynamic spreadsheets. The focus on dynamic spreadsheets was to emphasize that the spreadsheets were accurate as new data and values for specific variables in the problem are visible (rather than being stored in formulas buried in particular cells). The question for this study was focused on determining whether the teachers were able to transfer their understandings of dependable and dynamic spreadsheets to their instruction of students in their science/mathematics classes."--P. 1.