PME-NA

Leveraging Young Children's Funds of Knowledge to Spark Number Talks

• In Event: Supporting Student Learning

Description

There has been an increasing research focus on changing mathematics education by focusing on mathematical identity development. To do this, we must first seek to understand young children’s funds of knowledge (FoK) and leverage it to design instruction. To this end, this brief report describes how one early childhood teacher intentionally designed number talk instructional activities by foregrounding young children’s FoK through photos taken by families and herself to capture mathematics in their lives. The findings suggest that the photos provided insight into young children’s FoK while providing a real-life context to design number talks that may spark young children’s engagement in whole group discussions about mathematics.

Authors

• Dawn M. Woods, Oakland University

• Fei Xu, Oakland University