The Didactics of Mathematics with Instructional Technology: An epistemological-ecological analysis of secondary mathematics teacher education in Ghana and Sweden

Abstract in English

Instructional technology holds transformative potential for mathematics education, enabling rich conceptual understanding, fostering student engagement, and adaptive pedagogical strategies when used meaningfully. Although Ghana and Sweden have introduced policy mandates and curricular reforms that promote their integration, classroom uptake remains limited and uneven. Existing research often highlights either the benefits or the challenges, overlooking the formative processes through which pre-service teachers (PSTs) develop the didactic rationales required for theoretically grounded instructional technology use. This thesis addresses this gap by contributing to knowledge of how PSTs are prepared to teach mathematics by integrating instructional technology in Ghana and Sweden. Guided by the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic (ATD), this thesis employed a qualitative comparative case study design drawing on course plans, classroom video observations, semi-structured interviews with mathematics teacher educators (MTEs), and video-assisted focus group interviews with the PSTs. Analysis followed an epistemological–ecological approach, combining deductive content analysis, informed by reference models developed through the ATD, with inductive and abductive interpretation of their institutional conditioning. The study found a shared deficit in the logos (didactic rationales) taught across teacher education in Ghana and Sweden: instructional technology was used mainly at the praxis (practice) level, with limited articulation of the logos guiding its use. The resultant didactic praxeologies were productive but theoretically thin, especially at the pedagogy and didactic organisation levels of the meta-didactic co-determination, where compartmentalised course structures and limited reflective engagement constrained learning opportunities. Pre-didactic praxeologies (e.g., planning) predominated, with minimal opportunities for didactic (in the narrow sense, e.g., actual teaching) and post-didactic praxeologies (e.g., post-lesson reflections). Across both contexts, the way MTEs taught (meta-didactic praxeologies) was weighted toward representing and decomposing practice, with minimal opportunities to approximate practice, limiting PSTs’ opportunities to rehearse and critically reflect on theory-informed instructional decisions. Ecological analysis showed that instructional choices reflected pragmatic adaptation to local constraints rather than principled design. While Ghana’s constraints were largely infrastructural and policy-based, Sweden’s were more epistemic and design-based, tied to modular course structures. The thesis contributes to theoretical knowledge by reconceptualising instructional technology as a didactic object shaped by institutional transpositions and professional norms. The thesis introduces performative praxeologies to explain logos-thin practices as rational ecological adaptations rather than deficiencies. It develops a dual-layered didactic reference model and a scale of meta-didactic co-determination, providing a precise comparative lens for analysing teacher education systems. Methodologically, it establishes the ATD as a generative framework for capturing both practice and its underlying rationales. In practice, it proposes a hybrid instructional model that promotes a reflective, theoretically grounded, and context-responsive integration of instructional technology in mathematics teacher education.