ABSTRACT

TeachersPayTeachers.com (TpT) has emerged as an alternative to traditional curricular publishing houses; however, the critical investigation into this for-profit platform is limited. The aggregate content offered and downloaded from the platform through 2019 was Web-scraped, enabling us to construct a content model of TpT and provide descriptive results regarding the interactions between content, technology, and users/usage on TpT. We find TpT’s content model implicitly redefines what constitutes an education, elevating holiday activities and classroom decor to the same level as established curriculum. In terms of content, learning standards were largely absent and user ratings were uniformly high, casting doubt upon the validity of these technological features. 87.9% of resources were under $5, however, many small sales add up across users, indicating the platform extracts significant value from educators and schools. We discuss how the online educational marketplace phenomenon stands to impact the future of curriculum production and the teaching profession.

摘要

TeachersPayTeachers.com (TpT) 已成为传统课程出版社的替代品；然而，对这个营利性平台的批判性调查是有限的。截至 2019 年从平台提供和下载的聚合内容是网络抓取的，使我们能够构建 TpT 的内容模型，并提供关于内容、技术和用户/使用在 TpT 上的交互的描述性结果。我们发现 TpT 的内容模型隐含地重新定义了教育的构成，将假期活动和教室装饰提升到与既定课程相同的水平。在内容方面，学习标准基本缺失，用户评分普遍较高，令人怀疑这些技术特征的有效性。87.9% 的资源低于 5 美元，但是，许多用户之间的小额销售加起来，表明该平台从教育工作者和学校中提取了重要价值。我们讨论了在线教育市场现象如何影响课程制作和教学职业的未来。