Students’ and teachers’ experiences of distance teaching of mathematics in Swedish upper secondary schools

Sammanfattning: As technological advancements and improvements are made, the concepts of school digitalization and distance teaching become increasingly interesting and relevant. While distance teaching has existed for over a decade, it was not commonly practiced until the global pandemic 2020 where schools all around the world decided that teaching would be conducted remotely reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19. Sweden was one of these countries and decided that teaching in Swedish upper secondary schools would transition into being conducted at a distance. This master thesis focuses on students’ and teachers’ experiences of distance teaching in upper secondary school mathematics in Sweden during the years 2020-2022. The study is divided into two parts, one with a research purpose of examining how distance teaching has influenced students’ and teachers’ experiences of teaching and learning mathematics, and the other with the intent to create a support material in the form of a handbook to facilitate and integrate distance teaching in upper secondary school mathematics. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered from 80 students using an online survey and nine interviews with three being with teachers and six being with students. The quantitative data were analyzed thematically to identify focus points and resulted in the focus of five different aspects of mathematics teaching - students’ general work, student motivation, the possibility of receiving help from a teacher, classroom communication and classroom participation. The theoretical frameworks used were sociocultural theory and equivalency theory. Results from the quantitative data revealed that students’ experiences of distance teaching were mostly negative with a very small amount noting positive experiences. A small but notable amount stated that distance teaching had no effect on their learning experiences. Qualitative findings revealed that the reason for the negative experience was that most students were dependent on external factors such as outer motivation, social interaction, teacher help and classroom communication. Students who were not negatively affected were self-regulating and whose studies and learning were independent of external factors. The development part of this study aimed at developing a handbook that could help schools implement and utilize distance teaching. The handbook was created through analyzing previous findings to identify challenges and difficulties with distance teaching that the writers could provide potential solutions for, and advice on, how to prevent. The initial prototype of the handbook was exposed to a limited form of testing due to upper secondary schools having transitioned back to traditional teaching at the time of the study. Therefore, the presented version of the handbook remains a prototype.