Collective but diverse: Preschool teachers networking to develop toddler mathematics

This study focuses on a national network of preschool teachers working with toddler mathematics education. Activities within this network mean professional development based on knowledge of practice. The purpose of this study is to examine what differences can be found in these preschool teachers' perceptions of toddler mathematics education, and what these differences imply for collective professional development within the network.

The results show that planned mathematical situations are often placed on the scale for the vertical discourse and advanced content, whereas spontaneous mathematical situations are often placed on the scale for the horizontal discourse. Moreover, the results show that sometimes the teachers use different words to describe the same kind of mathematics teaching, and sometimes they use the same words to describe different kinds of mathematics teaching. This means that, even though some situations were placed differently within discourse and content, when reading the preschool teachers' descriptions of situations, the researchers could conclude that the situations were not so different after all. According to the researchers, the results indicate that the preschool teachers' collective professional development does not automatically imply that preschool teachers within the network have the same perceptions of toddler mathematics education.

Preschool teachers from the national network were asked to describe and document the situations in which the children encountered mathematics, including the preschool teacher's and the children's actions. In addition, the teachers were asked to answer how common the specific type of situation was.

In order to gain insight into how mathematics is made a content for learning, the preschool teachers subsequently had to place the written situations on a scale within Bernstein's notions of vertical and horizontal discourses. The vertical discourse is characterised by coherence of content, specialised language and systematically organised activities. The horizontal discourse is characterised as being adjusted to the situation and oriented towards everyday language. These two discourses were used to distinguish between activities, using as a starting point either everyday situations or planned activities with specific mathematical content.

The preschool teachers also had to place the situations described in Claesson, Engel, and Curran’s concepts of basic and advanced content, which were used to define the level of difficulty of the mathematical content in an activity. The mathematical content was characterised as basic or advanced depending on the knowledge and skills of the children. This means that if the majority of the children had already mastered the mathematical content, the content was characterised as basic, whereas more advanced content would be new content for the majority of the children. In total, 38 documents were analysed.

Palmér, H., & Björklund, C. (2017). Collective but diverse: Preschool teachers networking to develop toddler mathematics. Mathematics Teacher Education and Development, 19(3), 3-16.