The Interactive Whiteboards, Pedagogy and Pupil Performance ...

Figure 8: Frequency of using IWB by subject
100%
90%
80%
70%
Every lesson
Most lessons
Some lessons
Hardly ever
Never
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Maths Science English
(Although the Science teachers taking part in this survey appear to be the highest
users of IWBs, we can not be certain that this particular group are representative of
Science teachers as a whole.)
5.10.2 Different Curriculum Demands
Analysis of the in-depth case studies shows that the different curriculum demands of
Maths, Science and English make different demands on pedagogy and these affect
the ways in which teachers in the classrooms tended to interpret and use the
facilities of IWBs.
This can be mapped onto the recorded use of peripherals with the IWB in each
subject domain. In Maths the peripherals were used to demonstrate the potential for
abstract knowledge to be physically and verbally realised and then manipulated by
teacher and students and for this process to be displayed and so made available to
the whole class. In Science the peripherals were used to make core processes
visible to the whole class, including collating and manipulating data to produce a
shared data set. In English peripherals were used to facilitate collaborative spoken
interaction, or written annotation of the texts displayed.
There was also variation in the kinds of subject specific software that we observed in
the classroom. Maths and Science classrooms made most use of subject specific
software that could visually represent abstract ideas; English made most use of
software that allowed the manipulation of digital images and sound.
5.10.3 Pace
The case studies show that while the resources of the IWB that realise pace were
frequently taken up by Mathematics and Science teachers these were less often
used in the English classroom.
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