Theorizing a Role of Digital Resources in Promoting Instructional Change in Mathematics Departments

We address the following question: What role can digital resources play in promoting instructional change in mathematics departments? Drawing on Wenger’s Community of Practice theory, we put forward a role of digital resources to serve as boundary objects, which refer to those items, tangible or intangible, that are malleable enough to be taken up by different groups and employed in different social practices. To examine instructional change, we analyze products and processes of change via an adaptation of Bolman and Deal’s four-frame model for organizational change for postsecondary education settings. We look across three instructional phases: designing, implementing, and continuing. To demonstrate the viability of this approach, we draw on evidence from an intervention focused on promoting reasoning and transforming instruction in College Algebra, one of the earliest credit-bearing mathematics courses at US postsecondary institutions in which instructors are expected to cover a large amount of contents to prepare students for subsequent mathematics courses. By employing an analytic lens from organizational theory, we explain how digital resources may promote instructional change in settings where instructors experience departmental and curricular constraints on their classroom practice.