An Innovation’s Path to Mathematics Textbooks: A Retrospective Analysis of the Successful Scaling of the Swedish PUMP Project

What is it about?

In this paper we study the implementation of innovations stemming from a Swedish research and development project in mathematics education (PUMP) which was running from 1973 to 1977. Our focus is on informal implementation processes and we investigate how a relatively small group of people acted, in a more informal way, to scale up and implement an innovation within a context of decentralization. Special attention is paid to the role of textbooks in this process. We identify a number of channels used to influence teachers and textbooks authors. We also show that popular textbooks were influenced by the innovations, both shortly after the project finished and several years afterwards in the 1980s. Drawing on implementation research theory we seek to identify mechanisms that may explain why the implementation process succeeded. Our main material has been textbooks and interviews with key persons involved in the PUMP project.

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