Valuing What Children Bring: Professional Development for Developmentally and Culturally Responsive Pre-K Mathematics

• In Event: Mathematics + Early Childhood = ?

Abstract

Purpose: Children come to school with a complex array of intellectual resources and dispositions toward learning. Building on what children bring—making instruction contingent on their understandings, recognizing their practices, and framing interactions from their perspectives --is important in all areas of early childhood pedagogy, but especially in mathematics. This research describes a professional development program for teachers in a public preK program designed to bridge the gap between home and school to address concerns about the vexing cultural differences between the female, white middle class teaching force and an increasingly diverse student population.

Perspectives: The professional development was designed to provide activities that are mathematically substantive, developmentally appropriate, and culturally sensitive. Our working hypotheses were that (a) instruction that connects home and school experiences and builds on children’s emerging mathematical knowledge will increase the school success of underrepresented groups; and (b) high-quality, developmentally and culturally appropriate instruction is particularly important in children’s early years when they are preparing for and first entering school.

Methods: Designed to enhance the capacity of teachers of a newly initiated public preK program, fifteen preschool and primary grades teachers participated in a professional development program. In weekly classes, they read, reflected, and discussed issues related to early childhood, mathematics, and home-school connections. Each teacher worked with a focal child from a different ethnic, linguistic, or socio-economic background. In monthly meetings with the children and multiple home visits, teachers interacted with the child, focusing on counting and number skills and the family resources that contributed to these skills.

Data were collected through audiotape of small and large group seminar discussions, pre and post interviews with the teachers, and reflections and artifacts completed by the teachers. Data analysis identified the trajectories of the individual perspectives and a social sense of the funds of knowledge that shape children’s development.

Results: The professional development model supported teachers’ understanding of the specific mathematics they are teaching and strategies for ascertaining how children’s life experiences influence the way they think about that mathematics.

Recognizing potential mathematical learning in everyday experiences developed as teachers became more familiar with mathematical concepts. With vastly different understandings of mathematics and knowledge of pedagogy for four-year-olds, the participants supported each other in a professional learning community.

Most importantly, teachers realized that understanding children within the classroom was insufficient for fully supporting their learning -- they needed to better understand the resources that children had within their homes for numeracy. Though initially hesitant to position themselves as learners vis-a-vis families, after careful relationship building almost all teachers found value in working to identify, understand and use home resources as learning tools in the classroom.

Significance: A professional development program on early math, early childhood, and funds of knowledge can provide a powerful foundation for practice with young children. This model addresses fundamental questions related to how children’s mathematical understanding develops in their multiple communities and how professional development can foster communities of teachers and family members working together to support children’s learning mathematics with understanding.

Authors

• Mary Elizabeth (Beth) Graue, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Anita A. Wager, University of Wisconsin

• Anne Karabon, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Sonia Olivia Pacheco Ibarra, University of Wisconsin - Madison