Mathematics Education and Distance Learning: a systematic literature review

Abstract

The article presents the development and results of a systematic review of the literature on Mathematics Education and Distance Learning. This review is part of a doctoral research in development on e-learning and b-learning practices in Brazilian Mathematics Teacher Education Programs. The main objective of the review was to identify in Mathematics Education how previous researches (January 2011 and December 2017) defined the e-learning and b-learning teaching models. In addition, it is possible to understand at what levels of education these investigations are situated: basic education, initial or continuing teacher education. Although focusing on a doctoral undergraduate research, it is believed that the previous research, reproduced at other school levels, can also add elements and reflections to understand these models of courses in Distance Education. We carried out a systematic review based on orientations from different organizations and researchers dedicated to this area of research. In this sense, we followed different phases in the process to make the review: definition of objectives/questions, research equations and databases; determination of inclusion, exclusion, and methodological validity criteria; presentation and discussion of results; and data. As supporting software, both Google spreadsheets and NVivo11 were herein used. In addition to a higher incidence of work that occur in the teacher training context, the review results show great dispersion about the concept of e-learning and a lower occurrence of studies on b-learning models. Also, a significant number of works refer to the need to create conditions, in Distance Teacher Education Programs, for the constitution of (virtual) learning communities.

Keywords:
Systematic Review of Literature; Mathematics Education; Distance Learning; Mathematics Teacher Education