Mathematics in Early Childhood

Research, Reflexive Practice and Innovative Pedagogy

Oliver Thiel, Elena Severina, Bob Perry, Oliver Thiel, Elena Severina, Bob Perry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367370503
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000174649
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Structured around Bishop's six fundamental mathematical activities, this book brings together examples of mathematics education from a range of countries to help readers broaden their view on maths and its interrelationship to other aspects of life.

Considering different educational traditions and diverse contexts, and illustrating theory through the use of real-life vignettes throughout, this book encourages readers to review, reflect on, and critique their own practice when conducting activities on explaining, counting, measuring, locating, designing, and playing.

Aimed at early childhood educators and practitioners looking to improve the mathematics learning experience for all their students, this practical and accessible guide provides the knowledge and tools to help every child.

1

Reflexivity and early childhood mathematics education

Applying Bishop’s universality to vignettes of young children’s learning

Bob Perry, Oliver Thiel, and Elena Severina

Introduction

As we move into a new decade, it is clear that mathematics, and, in particular, early childhood mathematics, is in the international spotlight. The recent release of the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) (OECD, 2019) has forced many countries to reconsider their curriculum, learning, and teaching approaches as results have either stagnated or declined. There are now many studies which seem to show that early childhood mathematics achievement is a strong predictor of success in future school mathematics, other school subjects, and life itself (Carmichael, MacDonald, & McFarland-Piazza, 2014; Claessens & Engel, 2013; Duncan et al., 2007; Geary et al., 2013). As a result, across the globe, there has been much encouragement for early childhood professionals in both prior-to-school and school settings to engage with their children in mathematics learning, with one aim being to ensure that the children’s standards of achievement are higher by the time they meet the first national or international assessment of their careers. However, a recent paper (Watts et al., 2018) has suggested that some of the earlier estimates of the impact of early mathematics interventions on later school mathematics success need to be treated with caution and may have overstated the case.

Taken together, these results lead us to make two primary conclusions. First, correlational approaches to questions regarding longitudinal achievement patterns should be approached with great caution. Second, early learning does not appear to be an “inoculation” that necessarily produces later achievement gains, and consequently, theories regarding skill-building processes probably require some amount of revision.

(Watts et al., 2018, pp. 550–551)

While this later evidence does not deny the importance of early childhood mathematics education for future achievement, it does suggest also that the value mathematics has for children in the present and how children might experience mathematics in their early childhood years be considered. In order to achieve this, early childhood educators, researchers, and policymakers are urged not only to reflect on their practice but also introduce the notion of reflexivity to their thinking. For many, however, the distinction between “reflection” and “reflexivity” is unclear. Bolton (2010, pp. 13–14) helps with two descriptions.

Reflection is learning and developing through examining what we think happened on any occasion, and how we think others perceived the event and us, opening our practice to scrutiny by others, and studying data and texts from the wider sphere.

…

Reflexivity is finding strategies to question our own attitudes, thought processes, values, assumptions, prejudices and habitual actions, to strive to understand our complex roles in relation to others. To be reflexive is to examine, for example, how we – seemingly unwittingly – are involved in creating social or professional structures counter to our own values. (Italics in original)

Early childhood educators are urged to move beyond reflection and towards reflexivity; to consider what they and others believe and value; and to undertake their practice on the basis of such reflexivity. They should ask not only “What happened?” but also “Why did it happen?” and “What can I do about it?” Such a move is particularly required in the area of early childhood mathematics education, which has often been minimised in early childhood settings in spite of its long history through luminaries such as Fröbel (Fröbel & Lilley, 1967) and Montessori (1912).

A strong influence on early childhood mathematics education over recent years is the advent of the neoliberal political and advocacy juggernaut known as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). While the STEM movement has made mathematics visible, there is a danger that mathematics will be seen only to be the “servant” of science, technology, and engineering and that all mathematics will need to be drawn from these other disciplines or apply to them. Such an approach does fit well with early childhood approaches such as relevance, experiential learning, and play, but also has the potential to reduce realisation of the uniqueness of mathematics, particularly mathematical thinking, with a nature and approach which demand respect in its own right (Devlin, 2012; Hardy, 1940). In early childhood, mathematics provides opportunities for challenge, investigation, discovery, and sustained shared thinking (Siraj-Blatchford, 2007) that are not restricted to utilitarian applications, but also stimulate creative and innovative thinking in both young children and their educators (Shen & Edwards, 2017). Experiences with mathematics in the early years develop thinking and reasoning for young children’s present and future (Katz, 2010).

Current research perspectives indicate that mathematics is important in the here and now of early childhood as well as into the future; that there are some consequences of early childhood mathematics education for later learning, although the scope of these is under question; that early childhood educators are urged to adopt reflexive practices; and that while mathematics is very important in young children’s lives, it also has a role in developing particular forms of knowledge and thinking in its own right, both for the present and for the future. How can all of this be achieved in early childhood education settings in the best possible way for the child? One response has been what Moss (2014) has dubbed “schoolification” and which he has critiqued in the following way:

“schoolification,” an expressive term for primary schooling taking over early childhood institutions in a colonising manner (OECD, 2006, p. 62), leading to a school-like approach to the organisation of early childhood provision, the adoption of “the content and methods of the primary school” with a “detrimental effect on young children’s learning” (OECD, 2001, p. 129), and “neglect of other important areas of early learning and development” (p. 42). While mathematics, language and science matter, the question is how best to work with them in early childhood education; while the problem is how to avoid them contributing to further schoolification by the spread of crude and oversimplified educational approaches that are at odds with the learning strategies of young children and that end up doing more har...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Foreword
• 1 Reflexivity and early childhood mathematics education: Applying Bishop’s universality to vignettes of young children’s learning
• Part 1 Explaining
• Part 2 Counting
• Part 3 Measuring
• Part 4 Locating
• Part 5 Designing
• Part 6 Playing
• Part 7 Conclusion
• Index