Developing professional development programmes with gamification for mathematics teachers in Uruguay

Open Access

Abstract

International audience ; Uruguay is a country with an extensive government policy providing all teachers and students laptops and connectivity. In order to carry out new professional development programmes for teachers of mathematics to use digital technologies in classrooms, we developed a qualitative study, collected data, and analysed teachers' concerns and needs for classroom-based technology use, identifying a set of guidelines to assist teachers. The programme was designed to offer teachers key experiences that can help them to achieve their didactical goals. As traditional courses and assessment did not address the detected needs, game components were incorporated into the teacher training programme. Gamification contributed to the solution of several problems such as formal assessment, certification, passing grades, adaptive content and self-evaluation. This paper reports and links two studies about identifying teachers' needs and the impact of a gamified professional development programme developed in Uruguay.