Relational Noticing: Co-Constructing Math Meaning with Families at Home

• In Event: Navigating Community Relations in Mathematics Education Equity Research: Insights from Early Career Scholars

Abstract

Families fundamentally support children’s math learning; however the variety of ways in which families support early math learning is not always visible (Eason et al., 2023), valued, or respected by educational practitioners (Park & Paulick, 2021). Educational practices, like home visits, may support or obstruct families’ ability to recognize the significance of their daily practices in supporting children’s mathematical learning and school readiness (Jay et al., 2018). This presentation draws from the first year of a longitudinal qualitative study leveraging ethnographic methods to understand how culturally and linguistically diverse families engage in repertoires of mathematical practices and how the meaning of these practices is co-constructed and mediated by parent-researcher interactions.

This project frames learning as reflected in Repertoires of Practice (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003) and Funds of Knowledge and Identity (Esteban-Guitart, 2024) to recognize the experiences, skills, knowledge and identities of learners and their communities” (p.10). I visited eight families to conduct interviews and observations to learn about their daily routines. The parents were recruited from a Head Start site serving a military installation. Using constructivist grounded theory, I analyzed 48 interview transcripts and field notes collected during three home visits to describe meanings made of math activity as it took shape.

Findings show how families routinely engage in mathematical practices that parents don’t recognize as supporting math development. The vignette below shows how parents and researchers re-interpreted the everyday activity of a child preparing a cereal bowl as being fundamentally mathematical in nature during an informal conversation. Themes drawn from these descriptions situated mathematics activities that naturally occur in the home and the mathematical meaning constructed by the parents and the researcher. This project aligns with the other posters in identifying the importance of supporting families in recognizing how their daily practices support their children’s mathematical learning.

Vignette: Mom and I finished building blocks with her 4-year-old son at the dining room table adjacent to the kitchen. He went to the kitchen to grab himself a bowl of cereal, he climbed on the counter top to reach for the bowl in the cabinet, he grabbed the cereal container, and then he grabbed a milk jug. He brought all the materials to the table and constructed his cereal bowl. After observing this I mentioned to mom that I noticed he is very independent and is using his spatial skills and memory to navigate his kitchen to accomplish a goal that is important to him, having cereal, that’s something that is mathematical but we don’t always see it that way. Mom responded in agreement, and later upon leaving she mentioned “oh we also count every morning while he takes his medicine [shows me two inhalers that were on the kitchen island], we count to know how much to take so we do 1,2 and then 1,2”. Now I’m noticing it [the math that occurs in daily life]”. I respond by mentioning, yes once you start noticing it it’s hard to stop.

Author

• Daniela Alvarez-Vargas, University of Denver