Analyzing Teachers’ Work with Resources: Methodological Issues

Studying teachers’ work with resources leads to wide-ranging research questions requiring diverse theoretical frameworks and, consequently, various methodologies. Characterizing the dialectical relation between theoretical and methodological choices is critical. Teachers’ work with resources and professional development appear intertwined, opening new avenues for research and methodological developments. After developing the main methodological issues raised in Re(s)sources International Conference, four texts illustrate research that challenge these issues. Rocha studies the long-term evolution of interactions between teachers and resources. She proposes two new notions—documentational trajectory and documentational experience—and develops methodologies adapted to their study. Glasnovi Gracin and Courtney present contrasting studies on teachers’ work with resources, concerning lesson planning from two distinct countries (Croatia and the USA). They develop a methodology aimed at expounding on what occurs within teachers’ resource systems in different environments. Aldon, Front, and Gardes study proximity between teacher’s intentions and those of resource designers. They present a method of collaborative design and de!ne an indicator of convergence to analyze the conjunction between intentions of the resources’ authors and teacher’s classroom achievement. Taranto, Arzarello, and Robutti examine teachers’ professional learning in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). They elaborate a theoretical framework, MOOC-MDT, which allows for analysis of the interactive nature of MOOCs and their in"uence on teachers’ professional learning.