Digital Textbooks Between Reform Requirements and Classroom Practice in Croatia

In recent decades, educational reforms have introduced requirements for the digitalization of curriculum resources, including
textbooks. Digital textbooks can offer new opportunities for teaching and learning mathematics through the provision of novel
features such as interactivity, dynamics, feedback, and personalization. The aim of this paper is to examine how the digital
potentials highlighted in the reform are reflected in digital textbook tasks and how these tasks are used in classroom practice.
The study encompassed the analysis of the three digital textbooks for middle grades in Croatia, including all 3363 e-tasks,
and a multiple case study of six teachers and their classes. To answer the research questions, a comprehensive framework
was developed with the aim of analysing the e-tasks in terms of their digital potentials. The results showed that, in line with
curriculum requirements, the tasks included interactive quizzes, dynamics, and automated feedback. However, digitalization
was not being employed to its full potential. Classroom observations indicated that digital textbooks were primarily used to
display static images on a smartboard screen. Additionally, the findings suggest that the main users of digital textbooks were
mathematics teachers using frontal teaching and Guide-and-explain orchestration.