Not Enough Math to Play With: Constructing Playworlds in K-12 Schools

• In Event: STEM Education Across K-12 Contexts

Abstract

This study explores how children in one kindergarten classroom negotiated their teacher’s
established playworld and the mathematical implications that followed. Drawing from the
literature on playworlds, we consider how children’s opportunities for defining
playworlds, particularly in ways that are mathematical, are more or less constrained by
the prescriptions of K-12 schools, the context of our analysis. Employing video data, we
examine the dimensions of one play-based task as they are reflected, extended, or
challenged by three focal children, connecting those dimensions to the kindergarteners’
opportunities for mathematical learning. Findings indicate that three children were
willing to negotiate contextual, social, and material rules of the playworld, but hesitant to
play with mathematical expectations, thereby limiting the scope of their inquiry.

Authors

• Jamie Vescio, Vanderbilt University

• Jingyi Chen, Vanderbilt University

• Karen Underwood, Vanderbilt University

• Candice Love, University of Maryland