Teachers' decisions and the transformation of teaching activity

International audienceIn this paper I study teachers' decisions as a response to emerged contradictions in the context of enacting a new set of curriculum materials. The way these decisions are framed and the potentials they have to transform the teaching activity are analysed. Our data come from discussions in teachers' group meetings through one year. I use activity theory to capture social and systemic aspects of decision making and to interpret teachers' decisions. Future-oriented envisioning of the deliberate outcomes of teaching and action-based decisions about the actions to be undertaken are two different aspects of decision making. Both are traced in the data of this study as two necessary aspects for decisions that create possibilities to broaden the horizon of teaching activity. Last decades, in the context of curriculum reform efforts, teachers are seen as active agents and designers, whose instructional actions are influenced by curricular materials, but also shape the enacted curriculum alongside their students (Remillard, 2005). Considering teacher at the centre of the curriculum enactment, highlights the importance of teacher's decision making. Thus, a number of studies focus more or less explicitly on teachers' decisions. For example, Lloyd (2008) follows a teacher for two years and finds that his perception of students' expectations and his own discomfort associated with using the new curriculum were key factors in his decisions. A large number of studies are focused on in-the-moment decisions made by teachers. ZDM special issue 48(1-2) on teachers' perception, interpretation, and decision making, is indicative. Schoenfeld (2011) uses the notions of resources, goals and orientations to "offer a theoretical account of the decisions that teachers make amid the extraordinary complexity of classroom interactions" (p. 3). The studies examining in-the-moment teacher decisions, focus on the classroom context and emphasize the individual dimension of deciding. Nevertheless, the broader social, temporal and cultural dimensions of decisions a teacher makes in his planning or in the classroom are not addressed. In this study I seek a better understanding of how decision making process develops and how is shaping the teaching activity, drawing on cultural historical activity theory. The study is conducted in two secondary schools in Greece at the time of the introduction of a newly prescribed mathematics curriculum. In Stouraitis, Potari, & Skott (2015) and Stouraitis (2016), we have analysed the contradictions emerged in this context and how teachers' decision-making is framed and develops considering social and systemic dimensions. In this paper I study how and why teachers' decisions, may or may not have a transforming effect on teaching activity. The decisions in focus are discussed in group meetings and refer to planed actions undertaken in the classroom. I examine three teachers' decisions, the different ways these decisions shape the teaching activity and I interpret these differences. Although sociocultural perspectives have been used in research about teachers' decisions in mathematics education (see for example, Skott, 2013), activity theory has not been used so far. Thus, although empirically based, the paper is methodologically oriented, giving an account about the affordances of using activity theory in studying teachers' decisions