Abstract:
This presentation will explore one of the themes that emerged from my recent Doctoral study on Mathematically-rich Interactions in Early Childhood Centres, namely, “The potential for cross-curriculum Pedagogical Content Knowledge". Early childhood educators often demonstrate strong Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) in a particular curriculum area, usually the one in which they, personally, are most interested. This curriculum area may be art, science, literacy, the environment, music, drama, ICT, sport, or mathematics. The results of this study suggested that this focus may reduce the educator’s ability to identify or acknowledge the mathematical content that may also be occurring within their existing practices.
Overall results of this study indicated that mathematically-rich interactions were occurring with regular frequency throughout all areas of the early childhood settings. However, the analysis of these interactions also suggested that educators had difficulty identifying the variety of mathematical concepts that were occurring, especially during the interactions and activities which they believed focused on other curriculum areas such as art or science.
This presentation will take an in-depth look at a very small section of data to clearly demonstrate this theme - a single interaction between four-year old Emma and her educator, Samantha. This one-on-one interaction lasted approximately twenty minutes as Emma painted a giraffe at the easel. The analysis of this data identified an extremely mathematically-rich conversation, covering a wide variety of mathematical concepts. However, while Samantha demonstrated a strong PCK in early childhood art, her comments after the interaction suggested that she was largely unaware of the mathematics in their interaction.
When provided with a list of mathematical concepts during the interview stage of the data collection, Samantha was clearly able to identify how she could scaffold these within her existing practices. These findings suggest there is a strong benefit to providing educators with mathematical content resources that can be identified and supported through a cross-curriculum form of PCK within their existing practices.
Overall results of this study indicated that mathematically-rich interactions were occurring with regular frequency throughout all areas of the early childhood settings. However, the analysis of these interactions also suggested that educators had difficulty identifying the variety of mathematical concepts that were occurring, especially during the interactions and activities which they believed focused on other curriculum areas such as art or science.
This presentation will take an in-depth look at a very small section of data to clearly demonstrate this theme - a single interaction between four-year old Emma and her educator, Samantha. This one-on-one interaction lasted approximately twenty minutes as Emma painted a giraffe at the easel. The analysis of this data identified an extremely mathematically-rich conversation, covering a wide variety of mathematical concepts. However, while Samantha demonstrated a strong PCK in early childhood art, her comments after the interaction suggested that she was largely unaware of the mathematics in their interaction.
When provided with a list of mathematical concepts during the interview stage of the data collection, Samantha was clearly able to identify how she could scaffold these within her existing practices. These findings suggest there is a strong benefit to providing educators with mathematical content resources that can be identified and supported through a cross-curriculum form of PCK within their existing practices.