WIP: Bridging the Gap Between Instructional Design and Pedagogical Use: A Framework for Mathematics Educators
For mathematics educators and developers of teacher-support systems, this work provides a structured approach to characterize digital resources pedagogically, but it is incremental as it builds on existing learning theories without introducing new empirical results.
This paper addresses the gap between instructional design and pedagogical use of digital resources in mathematics education by proposing a framework that operationalizes learning theories into observable pedagogical variables structured as metadata. The framework focuses on the conceptual structure of content, showing how prior knowledge, representation, and conceptual construction can be represented as metadata to support teacher-support systems.
Despite the wide availability of digital resources for teaching mathematics, their effectiveness still depends on selection and integration processes that often lack explicit pedagogical criteria. This condition reveals a gap between the instructional design of resources and their pedagogical use in the classroom. To address this gap, this work advances the operationalization of learning theories through observable pedagogical variables. The proposed contribution translates principles derived from learning theories into dimensions and variables structured as metadata, thereby enabling the characterization of digital resources for teacher-support systems in mathematics education. Drawing on a literature review that evidences the limited operationalization of these theories in educational technology, the paper proposes a multidimensional structure. It then focuses on one of these dimensions: the conceptual structure of content. Specifically, it shows how aspects such as prior knowledge, representation, and conceptual construction can be represented as metadata to support the pedagogically informed selection and integration of digital resources.